In previous communications1 the senior author has shown that there is a disease of the conjunctiva accompanied by massive inflammatory enlargement of the preauricular and sometimes of other regional lymph glands which has certain clinical and histologic features so characteristic that either suffices to establish the disease as an entity. The essential conjunctival lesions appear clinically as gray or yellowish areas just beneath the epithelium, and histologically as localized infiltrations of the tissues with macrophages loaded with broken-down chromatin. The inflammatory reaction causes the conjunctiva to become elevated into nodules or ridges. The latter have often inaccurately been described in the literature as granulations.
In 1913, the senior author, by a special method of staining, demonstrated a minute leptothrix within the conjunctival lesions. This was present only within the essential lesion; it occurred in great numbers, was accompanied by no other demonstrable organisms and was present in every