Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/235

219 Extensions of Nursing Field 219 alization grew the now nation-wide campaign against preventible blindness. The American Medical Association had had, from ^, ' The preven- 1906, a committee on Ophthalmia Ne- tion of onatorum (now the committee on Con- blindness servation of Vision.) Its chairman was Dr. F. Park Lewis, who appealed for the aid of the general public in working toward the extirpation of that preventible infection. His appeal was heard by the New York State Committee for the Prevention of Blindness, which, financed by a special grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, had been or- ganized and had opened its campaign in 1908. This committee had as its prime mover and first chairman Louisa Lee Schuyler, whose share in creating the Bellevue training school for nurses had been so important, and who now conceived the idea of the lay movement for safeguarding eye- sight. Its first secretary was a trained, nurse of enterprise and ability, Carolyn Van Blarcom. Through various stages of growth a union of the lay and the medical forces was brought about fin- ally, in the National Committee for the Preven- tion of Blindness (191 5), while the original New York State Committee continued as a state branch. Through the work of this committee it has been shown that fifty per cent, of all existing blindness