96 INFECTIOUS AND PARASITIC DISEASES. 



conjunctivitis (ophthalmia neonatorum) is a very 

 serious infection, and requires prompt treatment if 

 the sight is to be saved. From sixty to seventy per 

 cent of all blindness in the world has been caused 

 by it. Happily, loss of sight may be guarded against 

 by dropping one drop of a i per cent solution of ni- 

 trate of silver between the parted lids of each eye, 

 at birth, in all infants born of mothers who are not 

 above suspicion; indeed, nearly all maternity hospit- 

 als and out-patient departments make this a routine 

 procedure. 



Gonorrhoea of the vulva is also a serious affection. 

 Very few vaginal discharges in children have any other 

 origin. The disease is not only important because it 

 may affect the child in after years, but also because it 

 may cause death from peritonitis by extension of the 

 infection to the peritoneal cavity. 



To the end of the second year diarrhoea in 

 Childhood, summer, and respiratory infections in 



winter, are the principal diseases. From 

 the second year to puberty is the period of greatest 

 susceptibility to scarlet fever, measles, chicken-pox, 

 mumps, whooping-cough, and diphtheria. These years 

 embrace the period of childhood, and on account of 

 the preponderance of the above mentioned diseases 

 during this time the latter are called the ^'diseases of 

 childhood." Diseases peculiar to children exhibit such 

 variations from the same or other diseases seen in later 



