Advertising

70

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF OPHTHALMOLOGY

but as a beginning—an opportunity. It is an opportunity for wider, closer, more serviceable cooperation. The benefits it will bring are still indefinite and lie in the future. But they are none the less real, and they will come to us as fast as we come to understand their value, and the conditions under which they can be secured.

E. J.

ADVERTISING. The advertising pages of the modern magazine or newspaper have been the place where individual whim and ex­ ploitation could develop, unchecked by any consideration of cooperative ben­ efit. But in this journal, just as cer­ tainly as in the reading pages, cooper­ ation for mutual benefit will dominate the policy with regard to advertising. This benefit will not be mutual merely for advertisers and publishers. The subscribers, as having by far the largest interest and having first made the journal possible, will receive the largest consideration. These aims will be borne steadily in mind. The things advertised will be things in which ophthalmologists are especially interested. Only strictly eth­ ical advertisements will be admitted. Only such drugs will be advertised as conform to the requirements of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association. Along all lines only responsible firms and institutions, that can be relied on to make good their promises, will be admitted to these pages. To understand what we mean, take the column headed "PRESCRIPTION O P ­ TICIANS." Every ophthalmologist in active practice sometimes wishes to in­ form a patient where he can get his glasses properly ground and fitted, or repaired, in some distant city. The cards of those who are known to be competent and reliable will furnish a directory useful to many of our readers. To secure such a directory we have not asked every optician who would like it to take all the space he was will­ ing to pay for. But a rigid form and limit of space have been adopted, that

will make the directory easy to con­ sult. Letters have been written to three ophthalmologists of wide reputa­ tion in each of these cities, asking them to designate the opticians they can best recommend. As their replies come in, the optician who seems to have the most general respect and confidence of the profession is given the opportunity to place his card in this column. During the first few months our pages will carry some advertisements taken over with the journals merged. But as time goes on our policy of classified advertising, of the highest in­ terest and value to our readers, will be more completely worked out.

E.J. RECURRING AND MASSIVE HEMORRHAGES IN T H E VITREOUS The paper on this subject printed elsewhere in this issue, brings up the clinical and practical aspects of a very important condition. While fortu­ nately not very common, it has the im­ portance that attaches to every patho­ logic condition that may end in blind­ ness; and it is quite liable to be bilat­ eral. In view of this danger of blindness, that vitreous hemorrhage carries with it, the practical means of promoting ab­ sorption, and preventing blindness in the individual case, cannot fail to be of interest. But it may be doubted whether great progress will be made in this direction without a better under­ standing of the etiology of such hem­ orrhage, than has been at our command in the past. Most eyes that become permanently blind from this cause re­ cover from one or more attacks, and only succumb to repeated hemorrhages and gradual reduction of recuperative power. If the later recurrences could be prevented by removing the under­ lying cause, the patient might in the end have useful or even unimpaired vision. The paper referred to goes somewhat into the subject of etiology, but does not go into it exhaustively. Especially it does not indicate the amount or im-