EYE INFECTIONS
Not long ago while in North Dakota near Canada, we took a trip one day just over the border to visit several villages of Russian peasants. We found the boys and girls of nearly the entire village suffering from trachoma—a dangerous, infectious disease of the eyes which spreads alarmingly from one child to another.
We saw the disease in all of its varying degrees among the children. Some of them had swollen, reddened lids. A discharge of pus was coming from the eyes of others, and they could not look toward a light or the sun. This disease is spread in a hundred different ways—through the common use of wash basins, towels, handkerchiefs, tools, toys, door knobs, gates, etc., and that is the reason why these isolated villages of foreign people who could neither read nor write the English language were nearly all so sorely afflicted.
The ordinary condition of "catching cold in the eye" ("pink eye") is just as infectious as the trachoma which we have mentioned, although it is more of an acute disorder and nothing like so serious.
In all such cases a physician is to be called immediately, isolate the patient, and give strict attention to carrying out the doctor's orders.
Another form of inflammation of the eye which was mentioned in a previous chapter, is the inflammation of the eye of the newborn.
In most civilized districts at the present, especially where the cases are attended by a physician, the eyes of all newborn babies are treated with either argyrol or silver nitrate. Just as soon as defective sight is discovered in the child the eyes should be examined at once and proper glasses fitted. While the glimmer and shimmer of moving pictures may seriously interfere with the child's vision, on the other hand, this very thing often discovers the defect in the eyesight earlier than it would otherwise be found out.
RUNNING EARS
Inflammation of the ears was fully covered in our discussion of adenoids and tonsils, but we would like to add at this time that under no circumstances should a running ear be regarded lightly. A chronic mastoiditis (inflammation of the middle ear) often follows measles, scarlet fever, adenoid infection, and inflammation of the tonsils. The attention of a specialist should be called to it and his instructions most carefully carried out; for, when we have a sudden stopping of the discharge from the ear with high fever and pain behind the ear, sometimes an operation is imperative or the child may be lost.