THE PROPOSED CRUSADE AGAINST BLINDNESS DUE TO PREVENTABLE OPHTHALMIA NEONATORUM.

For many years past sporadic efforts to reduce the amount of blindness in the country have been made by physicians. Either acting alone or in the mass as medical societies, they have done their best to spread the good news of a successful prophylaxis, so well stated by Dr. Park Lewis in his article on unnecessary blindness in this issue of The Journal.¹ Boards of health, also, have issued instructions to midwives; city councils have even enacted ordinances, while other agencies, lay and professional, have done their share in directing the attention of those most interested to the dangers inherent in leucorrheal discharges to the eyes and eyesight of the new born, to the symptoms that herald these dangers and to the most effective methods for preventing threatened blindness.

Doubtless these attempts to limit or to abolish preventable disease have had some effect, but in the United States the