[Report 1925] / Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow.

  • Glasgow (Scotland)
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1925] / Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/389 (page 17)
    Report jNto. I.—This is, I think, the first time that an inquiry into the causes of blindness at work in a large industrial area has been completed and the report gains in value from this feature alone. It will also serve as a basis with which to compare the future incidence of the various causes of loss of vision in the area of the committee. For these reasons, and also because of the variety of factors which enter into the production of blindness, the data have been analysed and discussed in a comprehensive, rather than in a brief and summarised manner. At the end of the report will be found grouped the several causes of blindness in the order of their incidence. A considerable group, 17 per cent., and probably much more, owe their disability to the venereal diseases, syphilis—congenital or acquired—or to gonorrhoeal ophthalmia in the newly born. The report discusses these affections fully, and points out that the prevention of blindness from these causes is bound up with the prevention and treatment of the original diseases. The provision of facilities for treatment by Local Authorities has been in process of development since 1917, and there is evidence that diminution in the incidence of syphilis is taking place from year to year. Among measures for the prevention of congenital eye affections facilities for ante-natal treatment take a prominent place. The prevention of the serious consequences of syphilis depends upon the assiduity with which individual patients attend for treatment, and although some improvement in this respect is taking place, there still remain some 30 per cent, of patients whose attendances at the clinics cease prematurely. This is a feature which has received serious consideration and is one of the arguments in favour of some form of notification. As regards gonorrhoeal ophthalmia, an affection which has been notifiable since 1912, an instructive description and chart have been inserted in the report showing the increase in incidence which took place during the war and the very considerable decline which lias followed since 1919. Total blindness due to this cause is now happily a rare event, although a number recover with impaired vision in one or both eyes. Out of 168 who have recovered with impaired vision since 1914, only 18 occurred during the past three years (1922-24). The prevention of these