f the eye, which might go on to the stage of mild conjunctivitis."[1]

[1] Journal of the American Medical Association, February 28, 1914.

Is this a fair summary of the dangers of the eye-test? Let us see what
the experimenters tell us.

In the Archives of Internal Medicine for December 15, 1908, two
experimenters describe their work. When a drop of turberculin
solution is instilled into the eye of certain cases, there occurs,
they say, an infetion which varies in intensity in different
individuals, "usually attended by lachrimation and moderate fibrinous
or fibro-purulent exudation WHICH MAY GO ON TO PROFUSE SUPPURATION."
This "profuse suppuration" is something rather more severe than the
symptoms described by the apologist just quoted.

The experimenters say:

"Practically, all our patients were under eight years of age, and all
but twenty-sex of them were inmates of St. Vincent's Home, an
institution with a population of about four hundred, COMPOSED OF
FOUNDLINGS, ORPHANS, AND DESTITUTE CHILDREN. The cases in the Home
were tested in routine by wards, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE CONDITIONS FROM
WHICH THEY WERE SUFFERING, and in the great majority of instances
without any knowledge of their physical condition prior to, or at the
time that the tests were applied. We purposely deferred the physical
examination of these children until after the tests had been applied."

Would any medical practitioner, called to the house of a wealthy man
to examine his ailing child, purposely defer its physical examination
until after this eye-test had been applied?

Many of the children were suffering from various ailments at the time
this test was made. Some had rickets, some typhoid fever, some
whooping-cough, pleurisy, pneumonia or heart disease. Some of them
were already near their end; in one case we are told that the "tests
were applied within eight days of death"; upon another emaciated
infant, the test was "applied three days before death." Infancy earned
no immunity from experimentation, for the eye-test was said to have
been applied "to seventeen infants, ranging in age from four weeks to
five months." In this group of cases, one infant was tested within the
last twenty-four hours of its pitiful and painful existence.

What were the possible consequences of these tests upon the sight of
the orphans and foundlings of St. Vincent's Home? The experimenters
frankly confess that at the outset they did not know.

"Before begi