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Treatment of gonorrheal infection of the human eye has as its immediate objective the early eradication of the gonococcus and its toxins from the conjunctiva and from the superficial layers of the cornea. The speed of this successful attack will directly influence prevention of corneal complications. Gonorrheal conjunctivitis usually has complications, and involvement of the cornea is the most serious result when it does occur. It is usually less difficult to save the eye of a newborn child who has this disease than it is to save the adult eye, in which, heretofore, involvement of the cornea has usually led to some hopeless complication. Ophthalmia neonatorum is the cause of blindness in about 10 per cent of cases in Europe; in just what percentage blindness is due to gonorrheal infection it is impossible to state.
At the Philadelphia General Hospital, where more than 80 patients with gonorrheal infection of the