Fig. 2.—The head of the worm.
Fig. 3.—The curved tail of the worm with its papillæ.
Fig. 4.—The ruptured part of the worm with protruding alimentary canal and testes.
Communication read at the Meeting of the Ophthalmological Society on October 18th, 1894.
Case of Filaria loa, in which the parasite was removed from under the conjunctiva.
By D. Argyll Robertson.
(With [Plate VI].)
On the 29th of June last I was consulted by Miss J. H⸺ on account of what she termed the presence of a worm in her eye.
She is a slightly anæmic, prematurely grey-haired, but otherwise healthy-looking lady, thirty-two years of age. She has resided at Old Calabar on the West Coast of Africa at intervals, for nearly eight years altogether. She twice had to return home on account of debility following severe intermittent fever. During her last visit to Old Calabar, which extended to about eighteen months, she suffered almost the whole time from chronic dysentery followed by severe remittent fever, which necessitated her return to this country last January in a very weak state of health.
She stated that the worm was first observed by her in February of this year, immediately after her return home. It frequented both eyes, but showed a preference for the left one, sometimes coursing over the surface of the eye under the conjunctiva, sometimes wriggling under the skin of the eyelids—causing a tickling, irritating sensation, but not real pain. It had latterly restricted its visits entirely to the left eye. On account of the remittent fever from which she was still suffering, her bedroom, when she first came home, was kept well heated, and until she recovered from the fever she noticed that the worm was particularly lively, occasionally causing the eye to become bloodshot, and the eyelids to swell and blacken slightly. As long as she was confined to warm rooms the worm was almost constantly moving about in the neighbourhood of the eye, causing such irritation as to prevent reading or work of any kind. This irritation with accompanying injection always passed off in the course of the day, and never resulted in severe inflammation.