GONOCOCCUS INFECTION AS A CAUSE OF BLINDNESS, VULVOVAGINITIS AND ARTHRITIS.

Abstract

CAUSE OF BLINDNESS. The most important of the causes of blindness with which we have to do is that resulting from a gonococcus infection of the eyes of the child at birth. Important— first, because it is the most common cause of blindness; second, because it affects the young child and a long lifetime of blindness may follow; and third, because it is preventable and curable in practically every case receiving proper care, and because it is one of the most dangerous maladies to vision when treatment is neglected or delayed. It is a veritable world plague. It occurs everywhere and no country has yet succeeded in getting it completely under control. So widespread is blindness resulting from it that Magnus, who has made careful statistical studies concerning it, says that out of 2,528 cases, of all ages, of complete blindness in Germany 10.88 per cent. were due to this