IN THOSE countries in which trachoma is epidemic and affects a high percentage of the population, infection almost always occurs in the preschool years, with an insidious onset and insignificant symptoms. Morax's early studies<sup>1</sup>in Egypt led him to believe that trachoma with acute symptoms was always complicated by secondary infection with one or more of the bacteria which are responsible for the acute ophthalmias, e. g., the Koch-Weeks bacillus or the gonococcus. The extraordinary prevalence and seriousness of the acute ophthalmias in Egypt have been the subject of numerous reports, and the term ``ophthalmia aegyptiaca''<sup>2</sup>has been used to designate the acute manifestations of a conjunctivitis which is a mixture of two or of all three of the commonest infections, i. e., trachoma, gonococcic conjunctivitis and acute infectious conjunctivitis (Koch-Weeks conjunctivitis). In those areas, however, in which trachoma is endemic only, as it is in the United