Kenneth F. Maxcy, MD, authority on infectious disease, wrote in a study published in JAMA in 1919, referring to the Spanish flu that spread worldwide during 1918-1919:
“Recently the eye has received little or no attention as a factor in the transmission of acute respiratory infections. It has been disregarded in planning measures for the prevention of the spread of contagious diseases. This was especially true in the recent epidemic of influenza.”
In a study, he demonstrated experimentally that the eye is potentially “a portal of entry of importance in the transmission of