OCULOGLANDULAR TULAREMIA TREATED WITH STREPTOMYCIN

Lesions resembling oculoglandular tularemia were first noted by Martin¹in 1907. He described 3 cases of conjunctivitis in patients with what he called "rabbit fever." It was not until 1911, however, that the causative organism was first isolated by McCoy and Chapin,²who were investigating a disease of ground squirrels in Tulare county, California. The organism was named Bacillus tularense after the county where it was first discovered. Fourteen years later one of Martin's patients was found to have a positive agglutination test for tularemia.¹In 1913 Vail³saw an unusual form of conjunctivitis and Wherry and Lamb,⁴working on this case, were the first to isolate Bacterium tularense in pure culture from a human being. At first it was thought that rabbits alone were responsible for transmitting this disease to man, but it has since been shown that many rodents, rabbit ticks, wood ticks,