The C.B.Z. — the Centraal Burgerlijk Ziekenhuis, the central civil hospital at Batavia — was the institution whose ophthalmological out-patient clinic and paediatric department produced the research on xerophthalmie in infants that Dr. C. E. Gomperts cited from Java in comparing his own findings from Groot-Atjeh.
Mulock Houwer’s infant studies
Through the close cooperation between the ophthalmological out-patient clinic and the paediatric department of the C.B.Z., Professor Mulock Houwer had the opportunity to include a relatively large number of infants in his investigations. These, together with the investigations at Semarang and Bandoeng, showed a proportionally greater frequency of xerophthalmia among kleuters (toddlers) than among infants — a result Gomperts’s own Groot-Atjeh figures confirmed. The finding reached him through a communication of Mevrouw Van Stockum.
The clinical evening
It was at a clinical evening in the C.B.Z., at a demonstration by Dr. J. H. de Haas of six non-European children with xerophthalmia, that Mulock Houwer laid down the definition of keratomalacie which Gomperts subsequently declined to accept: that not every corneal ulceration in xerophthalmia might be called keratomalacia, since keratomalacia was a very typical clinical picture in which the cornea melted away entirely in a few days.
See Also
Source
Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937 (“Orienting Ophthalmological Survey among the Atjehnese Population of Groot-Atjeh during 1937”), by Dr. C. E. Gomperts, offprint from the Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Afl. 19, Deel 80 (1940), pp. 1191-1238 (Batavia-Centrum: G. Kolff & Co.). Received by the editors 25 October 1939. Offprint DLP-157, Bibliotheek KITLV.