"PINK-EYE." 
Reprint from the Albany Medical Annals, July, 188g. 
ALBANY, N. Y. : 
Burdick & Taylor, Printers. 
1889. "PINK-EYE." 
Reprint from the Albany Medical Annals, July, 1889. "PINK-EYE." 
C. M. CULVER, M.A , M.D., Albany, N. Y. 
Case No. 748, a lady, became my patient on the 5th of 
February, 1887. On the 19th of March, 1889, she called on 
me again, having an acute catarrhal conjunctivitis in the 
left eye alone. The history of the case caused me no anxi- 
ety concerning my patient's recovery. I prescribed : 
Cocaini muriatis, 
Acidi borici, . . . ââ 0.40 gramma. 
Aquæ destillatæ, . . 10.00 " 
Sig.-A drop in left eye, when painful. 
A few months later I met my patient's husband, who told 
me that my diagnosis and treatment, in that case, had been 
a couple of failures ; that Dr. C. had had the patient abed, a 
week, soon after I saw her, with " pink-eye ; " that he used 
"a weak solution of borax," and the cure was obtained, in 
that time, by those means. I did not then exactly remem- 
ber what my prescription had been, but consultation of my 
case record demonstrated that it had been as above given. 
Fownes* says that boric acid "is also easily made by de- 
composing, with sulphuric acid, a hot solution of borax." 
Many readers of the Albany Medical Annals have 
used both boric acid and borax in practice. Competent 
judges are invited to compare the two courses of treatment 
hereinbefore cited. 
Case No. 1633 has lately told me that "pink-eye" had 
been diagnosed in her family, that it had been epidemic in 
* Fownes' Elementary Chemistry, p. 211, lines 4 and 5. 4 
the family (the number of victims having included a very 
transient visitor), and in a popular school attended by one 
of my patient's sisters. I believe the physician who diag- 
nosed " pink eye," in this case, was the same who diagnosed 
the same disorder in the first case herein cited. 
A prominent connoisseur in equine matters, husband of 
case 748, has told me that " pink-eye " sometimes affects the 
horse's legs and sometimes his intestines. 
I have been investigating so-called " pink eye " some time. 
Although I have read several of the best known works on 
diseases of the eye, in French, German and Italian, as well 
as in our own language, I don't think I have ever yet seen 
the compound word " pink eye," or its equivalent in any 
language, in print. 
In a letter dated June 3, 1889, Dr. Landolt, of Paris, has 
written to me what I translate into this : " I do not know 
what ' pink-eye ' means, and I have great fear that it means 
too many things to be interesting. The vulgar herd, that 
has no precise ideas of any thing at all, uses its expressions 
incorrectly and at random, and its slang does not deserve 
that we should stop a single instant over it." 
Lest I should give a biased translation, I append Dr. 
Landolt's exact words ; the reader may translate : 
"Je ne sais pas ce que Jink-eye' signifie, et j'ai bien peur 
que cela signifie trop de choses pour être intéressant. Le pro- 
fanum vulgus, qui ri a d'idees précises sur rien du tout, se sert 
à tort et à travers de ses expressions, et son slang ne mérité pas 
que nous nous y arrêtions un seul instant." 
Dr. Howard S. Paine told me, orally, on the 17th of June, 
1889, that, although he had seen conjunctivitis that seemed 
epidemic, the so-called " pink-eye " that he had seen had 
been simple catarrhal conjunctivitis; that the pink was of 
the same kind as that always found with an inflamed mucous 
membrane. 5 
May 16, 1889, Dr. Thomas Featherstonhaugh, now gov- 
ernment expert, at Washington, in eye affections, wrote me : 
" Don't know any thing about ' pink eye.' I had an idea it 
was some kind of a flower, until you gave me information 
respecting it." 
In a letter dated May 20, 1889, Dr. Edward Jackson, of 
Philadelphia, has written to me: "As to 'pink-eye,' I see a 
few cases each spring, that I think are only sun-burn of the 
conjunctiva. But there are other groups of cases that I can 
only regard as instances of an infective disease." 
I do not consider Dr. Jackson's last statement as in the 
remotest sense contradictory of the first. But while con- 
junctivitis is certainly, in almost any of its various forms, 
contagious, whenever there seems to be infection of conjunc- 
tivitis, I would regard the eye affection as merely one symp- 
tom of the infectious disorder. 
On the 22d of May, 1889, Dr. T. F. C. Van Allen told me, 
orally, that he thought the horse disorder called " pink-eye " 
and the human complaint that the laity (and a few physi- 
cians) call that, have no connection with each other; that, in 
horses, the affection is systemic, a prominent symptom being 
conjunctivitis; butthat the human disorder that has been 
termed "pink-eye" is a conjunctivitis not epidemic. He 
said the name " pink-eye," as seeking to connect the human 
and the equine affections, is a misnomer, although he tells 
me that it has been used, diagnostically, by two men who 
were medical professors. 
May 22, 1889, Dr. G. S. Munson told me that he had 
never diagnosed " pink-eye ; " that it is conjunctivitis and 
neither a systemic, nor part of a systemic, disorder. 
What the present writer is after is the truth. If it be true 
that I have misjudged or misunderstood "pink-eye," that's 
what I'd like to know. 6 
As to names, I care little for them. Most of them that 
we use, even technically, are etymologically wrong. Myopia 
means, etymologically, "partial lid approximating."* 
According to Dr. Bullions, glaucoma used to mean cata- 
ract ; etymologically, it signifies something bluish-gray, or 
greenish. In the book which I translated from the French, 
I have dared to so far disregard tradition as to adopt the 
suggestion of Helmholtz, and change " hypermetopia " into 
" hyperopia."f But, while I would deny that feeling has 
been exercised as a motive to the writing of this article, I 
do object to the assumed ponderosity of them who would 
get up a chromatic aberration in the nomenclatïire of eye 
diseases, and seem thereby to be more discriminating than 
we who know of black eyes as resulting from fisticuffs, etc., 
and of blue, gray, brown and other colored eyes as indicating 
the colors of irides; but of "pink-eye" only as being a part 
of the general shortage, of albinos, in pigment. 
• Landolt's " Refraction and Accommodation of the Eye," p. 126. + Ibid., page 132.