Word: ophthalmia
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Hard it is to look at a Gothic building without a romanticizing ophthalmia, harder still to consider a Gothic personage. Francois Villon is generally conceived to have been a frisking, lyrical scapegrace, much in the manner of John Barrymore's cinema portrayal of The Beloved Rogue, an essentially harmless, buoyant, inspired fellow.* The just biographer must be proof against the delusive magic of medieval names and picaresque histories...
Babies come crying into the world. They cry for air but in many cases the tears are gummy with pus, the little eyelids swollen and glued together. "Babies sore eyes" (ophthalmia neonatorum) is a common complaint. Gonorrhoeal infection is almost always the cause; contracted from the mother, or in an occasional instance from infected hands or articles. Total blindness is often the result, how often is indicated by the 25% of all blindness in children ascribed to it. This dark, tragic disease may be entirely prevented by therapy during pregnancy; may even be entirely cured, after having been contracted...