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be amended by substituting the London County Council for Boards of
Guardians in London as the authority responsible for such payments.
COMPULSORY NOTIFICATION OF
OPHTHALMIA NEONATORUM.
Resources of the Borough for obtaining the Information
desired respecting ophthalmia neonatorum—correspondence
with the London County Council respecting
Proposed Compulsory Notification.
The following report was presented to the Public Health and Housing
Committee on the 7th June:—
"A letter has been received from the Secretary of the Social
Welfare Association for London in which it stated: I am writing
to ask you if you would be so good as to bring it before the Public
Health Committee on behalf of this Association, into which the
Association of Subscribers to Charities has been merged.
"As you are doubtless aware, Mr. Bishop Harman (Occulist
to the London County Council Blind Schools, Chief Clinical
Assistant, Moorfields and Middlesex Hospital, etc., etc.) estimates
that forty per cent. of the blindness of the children in the Council
Schools is due to ophthalmia neonatorum. In a paper reprinted
from ' Public Health, January, 1909, Mr. Harman says:—
' Our present methods even with the aid of the Notification
of Births Act do not give us effective control over
the disease. It is still appallingly common to get children
brought to the Eye Hospitals with their eyes irretrievably
damaged within the first month of life. Compulsory notification
of all cases has been suggested as the best means of
controlling the disease. The idea is an excellent one.
Notification of a disease is one of the first requisites of our
knowing what is the true incidence of the disease. The tale
of its effects we may know, but the number of cases from
which these arise we do not know.'
"From one district 22 cases out of 60 were first seen by Mr.