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55
A Special School at Boundary-lane has been opened for cases of high myopia and it will be
used to give education to these children in such a way that their eyes may be spared during the period
of growth. The first year's experience in the working of this school will be necessary before it is worth
reporting at length on the subject.
The public provision for treatment of eye defects is referred to on page 23. Nothing has yet been
finally decided in regard to the public treatment for all the mass of eye defects. An experimental
school clinic on a small scale is being privately worked at Bow. It has not been established long enough
to have made any report. Dr. Hugh Thompson, who was formerly on the medical staff of the School
Board for London, has been conducting an ophthalmic clinic for school children in Woolwich since
May 1907. The whole of the organising work is done by the ladies of the Invalid Children's Aid Associaation,
on whose premises the children selected by them are seen during 2b or 3 hours once a week. In this
way, Dr. Thompson had treated 456 children up to the end of 1908 ; of these 316 were refraction cases
needing spectacles, 54 were cases of conjunctivitis or troubles of the lids, independent of refractive
error, 25 of corneal affection needing active treatment. The rest were of various kinds, some trivial,
some on the other hand so grave as to be too late for any effectual treatment, most of the latter are the
cases of corneal opacities due to old phlyctenular keratitis, and so often alluded to in previous reports as
cases neglected and trivial in themselves yet resulting in lifelong injury. A few were cases out of the
common, and a few required hospital treatment. The refraction cases were examined under atropine in
a specially fitted room, and an optician attended to provide the spectacles prescribed which cost from two
to four shillings according to the complexity of the prescription. The collection of spectacle money from the
parents is part of the work of the organising ladies. The co-operation of the district nurses has also been
invaluable. As regards hospital treatment, "Woolwich is peculiarly unfavourably situated, but arrangements
have been made so that all cases requiring admission are taken in either at Guy's or the Western
Ophthalmic Hospital, and in this way all unnecessary journeyings to and from the middle of London
have been avoided.