t medical assistance is urgently needed, or, if necessary,
they are themselves to report to the local authorities and the district
doctor. Neglect of these regulations entails liability to punishment.
Eleven of the United States of America have enacted laws requiring that,
if one or both eyes of an infant should become inflamed, swollen or
reddened at any time within two weeks of its birth, it shall be the duty
of the midwife or nurse having charge of such infant to report in
writing within six hours, to the health officer or some legally
qualified physician, the fact that such inflammation, swelling or
redness exists. The penalty for failure to comply is fine or
imprisonment.

The following weighty words, from a paper prepared by Dr Park Lewis, of
Buffalo, N.Y., for the American Medical Association, show that laws are
not sufficient to prevent evil, unless supported by strong public
sentiment:--

"When an enlightened, civilized and progressive nation quietly and
passively, year after year, permits a multitude of its people
unnecessarily to become blind, and more especially when one-quarter
of these are infants, the reason for such a startling condition of
affairs demands explanation. That such is the fact, practically all
reliable ophthalmologists agree.

"From a summary of carefully tabulated statistics it has been
demonstrated that at least four-tenths of all existing blindness might
have been avoided had proper preventative or curative measures been
employed, while one-quarter of this, or one-tenth of the whole, is due
to _ophthalmia neonatorum_, an infectious, preventable and almost
absolutely curable disease. Perhaps this statement will take on a new
meaning when it is added that there are in the state of New York alone
more than 6000, and in the United States more than 50,000 blind
people; of these 600 in the one state, and 5000 in the country, would
have been saved from lives of darkness and unhappiness, in having lost
all the joys that come through sight, and of more or less complete
dependence--for no individual can be as self-sufficient without as
with eyes--if a simple, safe and easily applied precautionary measure
had been taken at the right time and in the right way to prevent this
affliction. The following three vital facts are not questioned, but
are universally accepted by those qualified to know:--

"1. The ophthalmia of infancy is an infectious germ di