ON looking through the answers to the questions I set of the various forms of conjunctivitis I was struck with the enormous number of varieties that from the text-book standard might be enumerated. I wondered whether we were not adopting a sort of ready reckoner style, and whether the simple facts of conjunctivitis might not be lost sight of in the morass of nomenclature. There would be less to complain of if the names were consistently selected, either from the appearance or from the cause, or

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... from the character of symptoms, but no such method is adopted. Some forms are described by names that are a survival of an older nomenclature, such as blennorrhoeal, catarrhal ; often names are chosen from the appearance of the discharge, mucopurulent, membranous, or from different characteristics, as nyctalopic, angular, follicular ; others again from the exciting cause, pneumococcal, diplobacillary, gonococcal, so that without much difficulty one can place exactly the same condition in two or more categories. Instead, therefore,