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Very different, however, is the condition of the baby's eyes which the health officer [Dr. George C. Ruhland] of the District of Columbia is endeavoring to avert. A certain number of children in every community are infected at birth or soon after with a most virulent pus, often gonorrheal, which gets into their eyes from the birth passages of the mother. It excites an inflammation so intense that in many cases the eyes are irrevocably lost before it can be controlled. The discovery made more than half a century ago, that the organisms causing this inflammation could be made innocuous without injury to the sight, was epoch-making and the simple measures recommended for this purpose are now used in every civilized community throughout the world. They are employed in every public hospital as well as by private practitioners. These methods have reduced blindness during the last 25 years from 26% to less than 7% in children, as shown in the diminished numbers entering the schools for the blind. To fail to give every infant an opportunity to have this protection is to neglect a duty which we owe the community as well as the child. This has nothing to do with religious beliefs. It is purely a matter of physiological and biological knowledge which can be verified beyond question by those sufficiently interested to make inquiries concerning it. ...
Was it not the Great Healer who said, whatsoever you do unto the least of these you do also unto me?
PARK LEWIS, M.D.
First Vice President
National Society for the Prevention of Blindness Buffalo, N. Y.
Discrepancies
Sirs:
In the issue of TIME, May 3, under Sport, your most interesting article has one or two discrepancies which might be of interest to you. In the first place, you state that "of the 19 U. S. colleges which maintain crews, 18 have Washington-trained oarsmen on their coaching staffs." Syracuse, Princeton, M. I. T. and the U. S. Naval Academy all have other than Washington-trained coaching staffs. Likewise to call the late Hiram B. Connibear a "grandfather" of U. S. crew racing is a little unfair to those men who promoted and took part in intercollegiate rowing long before Mr. Connibear went to Washington. That crew does owe much to Mr. Connibear and to the University of Washington in developing the "arm and leg" stroke, no oarsman will deny.
STEEL SWIFT
Philadelphia, Pa.
Reader Swift is right.—ED.