Serum for Sore Eyes

A physician faced with a case of epidemic keratoconjunctivitis, the eye infection now circulating in the U.S., especially among war workers (TIME, Dec. 28), has had to let the disease run its unhurried course for one to eight weeks. All he could do was try to make his patient as comfortable as possible; there was no known cure for "shipworker's eye."

Dr. Murray Sanders of Manhattan got to work as soon as keratoconjunctivitis showed itself, announced last October that he had isolated the disease virus. Last week, with Dr. Alson Braley, he wrote in the Journal of the A.M.A. that he had tried injections of blood serum from convalescent cases on ten patients. Results: he achieved "striking clinical improvement" in nine of the ten, six of whom were cured in 48 hours.

Reason for announcing his favorable results while his work is still in the early stages: "The exigencies of a new infection in wartime industry, for which no treatment is known, warrant publication of therapeutic studies which may be of some assistance to physicians."

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