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Therefore I say, let us check this dread disease and danger. The State should require that every case of disease of the eye in the newborn be reported. If blindness follows, then an investigation should be instituted. The certainty that such an investigation would surely follow would compel physician and nurse to exercise the utmost care in the treatment of the new-born.

By such vigilance on the part of the Commonwealth hundreds of individuals would be spared misery and dependence, and the Commonwealth itself would be saved expense. The entire cost of preventing ophthalmia is indeed an ounce of prevention to the many pounds that avoidable blindness costs the State. The cost of educating a blind child in a good school is three hundred dollars a year. The special expense necessary to make a blind man self- supporting, even in conditions far better than now exist, must be an extra expense to the State. If, as is the too common case, a blind citizen becomes dependent through a long life, the average sum spent for his maintenance is ten thousand dollars. This sum must be multiplied many times to determine the total loss; for by blindness a productive breadwinner is removed from the community.

If a tithe of the money we now spend to support unnecessary blindness were spent to prevent it, the State would be the gainer in terms of cold economy, not to speak of considerations of happiness and humanity. How, then, can a wise Commonwealth suffer a single case of avoidable blindness to pass unquestioned? We pay money in advance to insure our property and the property value of our lives. Yet we have not the foresight to insure our children against the bitter and costly evil of blindness!

In ancient times disease was looked upon as a curse to be conjured away. Later it was regarded as a necessary misfortune to be cured or alleviated. In our own time it is known to be the result of wrong living, and therefore to be avoided and prevented. Prevention has come to be the all-important aim of medical science. The fight to exterminate yellow fever and tuberculosis is a greater battle than any that the doctors have waged against disease after it has seized upon the patient. If our physicians have undertaken to exterminate so subtle an enemy as tuberculosis, they should make short work of ophthalmia neonatorum, which is obvious and easily cured. To do battle with it our physicians must march as soldiers have gone forth before, ordered by the State and urged on by women. American women can accomplish almost anything that they set their hearts on, and the mothers of the land together with the physicians can abolish infantile ophthalmia, yes, wipe it out of the civilized world.