I
remember distinctly every word of the great doctor when, after looking
at my eyes, he turned to the superintendent, and said sadly, "Needlessly
blind! her eyesight _could_ have been saved." These words made a
profound impression upon my childish mind, and as I sat and listened,
while child after child was examined, and heard again and again the same
remark, "needlessly blind!" I resolved to know more about this eye
disease with the very long name, ophthalmia neonatorum, to learn its
cause, and see just how it might have been prevented. But we did not
hear as much about prevention as we do now, and, although I did not
forget the matter, it was many years before I had an opportunity to
study it further. When I did, I found that at least one-fourth of the
children in schools for the blind in this country were there, just
because a simple precaution was not taken at the time of their birth.

Five years before I knew there was such a thing as unnecessary blindness
(since I had been told I was blind as the result of a severe cold in the
eyes), a Belgian doctor, Professor Crede, a famous obstetrician of
Leipsic, appalled at the number of children who lost their eyesight
within a few days after birth from a virulent eye infection, determined
to try the effect of a simple prophylaxis, a two per cent solution of
nitrate of silver, dropped in the eyes of every newborn child. The
effect of the prophylaxis used in Dr Crede's clinic was marvelous,
reducing the number of cases from ten per cent in 1880, to one-fourth of
one per cent in 1886.

"Babies' sore eyes," or ophthalmia neonatorum, is defined by Dr Sydney
Stephenson as "an inflammatory disease of the conjunctiva, usually
appearing within the first few days of life, due to the action of a
pus-producing germ introduced into the eyes of the infant at birth." Dr
Crede found that, by putting two drops of the solution into each of the
infant's eyes at birth, all danger of infection was averted. The
solution is harmless to healthy eyes, and, in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred, destroys infecting germs when they are present. The cost of the
drops is nominal, about two cents per patient, and yet over ten thousand
persons in the United States, and as many more in other countries, have
been deprived of the most important of the special senses through the
ignorance and neglect of doctors and midwives, and the public at large,
as to the gravity of the disease, and the methods of prev