Szemészet, 2004 (141. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

2004-06-01 / 2. szám

188

Szemészet

Prior to the Congress the Association had, in May, held its 5th annual meeting. The number of members was by then 79. At the 1909 general meeting the question of the compilation of national blindness statistics was raised once more. The Association formed a special “Committee on the blindness question”, and the chairman, Adolf Szily, contacted the director of the National Statistical Office. He urged that in the forthcoming national census of 1910, questions relating to blindness should be incorporated; and proposed that the Association should prepare the requisite supplementary questionnaire sheets. This was in fact done; but unfortunately in the event the results proved unsatisfactory, because many of the forms were incorrectly completed.

Emil Grósz proposed that further-training courses should be instituted for ophthalmologists in the provinces. This was the seed-germ of the later system of professional further-training in Hungary. Germany was a model in this field also: later in the same year (26 September-10 October) Hungarian delegates had the opportunity to attend as observers an ophthalmology further-training course held in Freiburg. During the 2 weeks they attended 65 lectures. The renowned Professor Axenfeld lectured and presented patients each day. Adolf Szily, one of the Hungarian visitors, also presented a lecture.

From the ophthalmological point of view however, perhaps the most significant event of 1909 was the performance of the first keratoplasty procedure in Hungary. The following year, Gyula Fejér gave an account of the innovative operation in his lecture titled “The present state of the art regarding keratoplasty”. He illustrated with a case-report from his own experience, in which he had performed corneal transplantations on a boy who had suffered an accident involving severe alkali burns to both eyes. For the transplants, he used sound corneal tissue taken from a living person who had become blind due to chorioiditis which developed after an injury. For one eye he took material from the central cornea, in the other case from the edge. Both transplants used a trephine of diameter 5 mm. For wound protection only an eye-bandage was used, which was left in place for 3 days. On bandage removal the transplants were found to be transparent and wellfitting, and the anterior chamber was present. Unfortunately however, cloudiness developed on the 14th day. Treatment with warm wet bandages and one drop per day of atropine was given. The patient was discharged after 3 weeks, with a prescription of drops consisting of 5% aqueous Dionin. But after one further week, inflammation developed in both eyes and the transplants became completely clouded, although some light-perception remained in the left eye. In the remainder of the paper, the author considers possible reasons for the ultimate failure. He concludes that the tissue-nutrition of the transplants was probably defective.

1910-1914

One of the most valuable functions of the Association was its continual effort to keep the members up-to-date on current world developments in ophthalmology. In the 1910 “Szemészet” there was accordingly provided an extensive review of current literature. Corneal transplantation, it appears, remained an issue of central interest. There was for instance an account of work by F. Salzer (Arch. f. Augenheilk., Jan. 1910) who transplanted the cornea from a horse onto the bag of a rabbit eye. The corneal tissue became partly absorbed, and partly developed as scar tissue. The main interest of the article however is that prior to the operation the transplant tissue had been kept preserved, in formalin and alcohol. This raised the valuable possibility of corneal-tissue preservation which, thanks to the Association, Hungarian ophthalmologists were informed of in timely fashion.

In 1910, membership remained at 79. The end-of-year financial balance however was by then considerably better, at 622.58 Crowns. The “golden years of peace” continued for a little longer, and so did the intellectual and material blossoming of the Association. The leadership cared for all aspects of the members’ interests. At the meeting in 1911, for example, the imminent establishment of several new ophthalmic departments (in the Újvidék region and in the towns of Gyula, Perlak, and Zsolna) was announced, “in order that Association members may have the opportunity to prepare to take up positions in these new scientific workshops”.

The “Committee on the blindness question” completed its work on the new census questionnaire, in which items 18-21 and 39-53 related to blindness. At the scientific session following the general meeting 34 members participated, including three women.

In 1912 the eighth general meeting took place on 25-26 May. Vilmos Schulek gave a lecture in commemoration of József Imre, titled “The fate of eyes of differing refraction”.

The patient data for the Budapest eye clinic may be of interest. During the year, 16 671 patients had attended free public ophthalmic sessions; while at the clinic itself, 1280 inpatients were treated, 148 for glaucoma. In addition, between 80 and 130 outpatients were dealt with each day. The number of treatments in the year was 38 624. For the interested reader, more detailed information can be found in the pages of “Szemészet”.

The year 1913 marked the 50th jubilee of the “Szemészet” journal. On the opening pages of Issue no. 1 for that year the editor, Emil Grósz, published an address “To the reader”. With justifiable pride, he wrote: “Ophthalmology has experienced a spectacular growth; it has outgrown its children’s shoes, and has reached full productive maturity.”

This was the first year when the Association did not hold its general meeting at Whitsun; it was held instead on 7-8 September. The reason for the change was that another group, the German ophthalmologists, had arranged their annual meeting in Heidelberg at Whitsun. By that period there was a close professional relationship between the two societies; and the leadership of the Hungarian Association wished to avoid a clash of dates, in order to allow members the opportunity to gain experience abroad.

Magdolna Zajácz