ALTHOUGH tuberculosis of the conjunctiva is no longer commonly observed, primary tuberculosis of the conjunctiva is even more rare. Since Koester1 first reported a case of tuberculosis of the conjunctiva in 1873, only one large series of cases of primary tuberculosis of the conjunctiva has been reported, i. e., by Blegvad2 in 1936, who reported the cases of 40 patients with primary conjunctival tuberculosis seen at the Finsen Institute from 1909 to 1934. Samuelson3 observed only 7 patients with tuberculosis of the conjunctiva, and 3 of these had primary infections.
In this country, the number of cases reported4 has been even fewer than those reported from European sources.5 Burchell6 did not observe a single case in twenty years at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, where there was an average annual admission of 30,000. Only isolated cases were reported from American sources by