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To the Editor:
Years ago there was a prominent surgeon in my hometown who said that he never read the medical literature because it got him all mixed up. He was probably looking into the future and visualizing the present literature on dendritic keratitis. For example, Leopold found idoxuridine (IDU) better than thiomersal in a double-blind, while Luntz and MacCallum "suggested" equal results (in a very small series) with idoxuridine and neomycin; and both groups missed the boat by not using a real placebo such as water. If they had, we would now have a good idea of the spontaneous cure rate in herpetic keratitis. I say "water" because Karnofsky found boric acid effective against one virus.I am sure that we would be interested in the comments of these gentlemen, plus Kaufman, Burns, the California group, Hughes, DeVoe, Allen, etc., on a number of points—insofar as their present knowledge