Your Child Must Not Go Blind

You may be seized by alarm—by terror, even, Madam—if your doctor were to announce to you that the law itself may be the cause of your child, or any other child, being stricken with blindness for life: that law which the governments of the world have imposed upon their peoples for the past seventy years, requiring that a solution of silver nitrate be dropped into the child's eyes at the hour of birth, with severe penalties applied against anyone who violates it or neglects to carry it out. Nor may anyone venture to criticize this law, for it was enacted to prevent the numerous cases of blindness that used to ravage innocent children through their infection with the microbe of "gonorrhea," which causes in the eyes an acute inflammation from which the sight escapes unharmed only rarely.

Seventy years ago these painful facts drew the attention of Dr. "Credé" of Berlin, and he gave orders that into the eyes of children, in the very minute in which they are born, there be dropped a single drop of a solution of silver nitrate diluted to 1–2 percent—for this was the common antiseptic of the time. Its use spread through all the maternity hospitals of Germany and brought brilliant results: the rate of infant blindness fell until it became very slight indeed, and most of the babies born that year kept their sound sight and the brightness of their eyes.

The world's journals passed on this momentous scientific event, and Britain soon adopted it, then the United States, then all the countries of the world; and all of them followed the example of the German government by enacting a state law requiring the use of silver nitrate solution, and it alone, in the eyes of every newborn at the hour of birth... The years rolled on, and cases of blindness among children grew fewer—but unfortunately they did not cease entirely... The reason is that silver nitrate itself is a powerful caustic substance, and it may be the cause of an acute inflammation that soon destroys the child's sight, for it is not easy to make certain that the solution is diluted to the degree at which the danger cannot occur...

Doctors have long felt that the use of silver nitrate remains surrounded by doubts and by fear for children's sight. Dr. Credé himself, when he first dropped it into children's eyes, warned his assistants that its use was dangerous if the strength of the solution exceeded 1–2 percent. And so doctors went on applying this law under compulsion, watching for the chance that would release them from this oath with its unsafe consequences.

And it happened that in the year 1946 cases of blindness among the newborn recurred, because of the error

arising in the preparation of the silver nitrate solution. A group of doctors decided that the situation could no longer be borne, and at once they set about studying the various antiseptics; nor was it hard for them to single out penicillin from all the rest—that wondrous drug whose results have dazzled the world and kindled a new hope across the broad horizons of medicine.

And indeed, as the outcome of their many attempts, the doctors obtained astonishing results, and not a single case of blindness occurred among the newborns on whom the penicillin trials were made that year. These doctors became certain that they had found what they had been seeking. But this question—the question of replacing silver nitrate with penicillin—proved of greater consequence than they had reckoned, for these doctors are bound by a legal oath, and it is not easy to break it so long as public opinion does not stir a finger in the matter. And so the doctors will remain with their hands tied until public opinion, and then the governments, bestir themselves to loose their bonds by amending the law and substituting penicillin for the silver nitrate solution, to be dropped into the eyes of every newborn at the hour of birth—out of care for the eyes of our dear children against a near danger that may threaten their sight and rob them of the enjoyment of light, the joy of life!