Professor Mulock Houwer was the Netherlands-Indies professor of ophthalmology at Batavia whose advice shaped the design of Dr. C. E. Gomperts’s eye survey of Groot-Atjeh in 1937, and with whom Gomperts nevertheless disagreed on the definition of keratomalacie.
Advice on the survey
Before beginning the survey Gomperts wrote to Mulock Houwer requesting suggestions, and the professor complied. “De belangstelling van den HoogGeleerde ging hoofdzakelijk uit naar de frequentie van xerophthalmie en naar de oorzaken van blindheid in Groot-Atjeh” — the interest of the learned professor went chiefly to the frequency of xerophthalmie and to the causes of blindness in Groot-Atjeh. The eight-point scheme of the survey was drawn up accordingly, with those two subjects at its head.
Gomperts opened his report with a footnote of thanks: “Langs dezen weg betuig ik aan Professor Mulock Houwer mijn hartelijken dank voor zijn opbouwende kritiek en de zeer gewaardeerde aanwijzingen” — by this means I express to Professor Mulock Houwer my cordial thanks for his constructive criticism and much-valued directions.
Research on infants
Mulock Houwer’s own investigations, conducted through the close cooperation between the ophthalmological out-patient clinic and the paediatric department of the C.B.Z. at Batavia, gave him the opportunity to include a relatively large number of infants. These, with the investigations at Semarang and Bandoeng, showed a proportionally greater frequency of xerophthalmia among kleuters (toddlers) than among infants — a finding Gomperts’s own figures confirmed.
The dispute over keratomalacia
At a demonstration by Dr. J. H. de Haas of six non-European children with xerophthalmia at a clinical evening in the C.B.Z., Mulock Houwer remarked 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 within a few days. “Bij de xerophthalmie ziet men dikwijls minder ernstige hoornvliesprocessen, die waarschijnlijk op infectie van buiten berusten, wat voor de keratomalacie niet vaststaat. Het zal van belang zijn deze verschillende aandoeningen te scheiden en te trachten vast te stellen, wat de oorzaak der verschillende typen is.”
Gomperts declined to share this view, arguing from the eighteen hospital cases he had observed in 1937 that the lesser corneal changes were a preliminary stage of keratomalacia rather than a distinct condition.
On the sexes
Mulock Houwer, with Sie Boen Lian, did not share Tijssen’s supposition that the greater frequency of blindness among boys was caused by more boys than girls being attacked by xerophthalmia — a supposition which Gomperts, for his own surveyed area, shared entirely.
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.