View report page

131
Since the Local Government Board has placed the matter on a
satisfactory basis, by issuing an Order authorising this provision of
antitoxin for both curative and prophylactic purposes, the Borough
Council has availed itself of the power in necessitous cases: for the
prompt administration of the remedy, before patients are removed to
hospital and pending report of the bacteriological examination of
swabs taken from the throats, often goes far in the direction of preventing
a fatal termination to the disease.
In the Report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the year
1910 some instructive tables are shown, which demonstrate the
influence of antitoxin upon the death-rate of Diphtheria. As it has
been suggested that the decline in the mortality from this disease,
which has followed the introduction of antitoxin treatment, is due to
the inclusion of numbers of cases which had been certified as
Diphtheria after the bacteriological test only, such cases have been
dealt with separately in the statistical analyses, and the decline is
noteworthy even after the exclusion of the above cases. The deathrate,
calculated on the admissions to hospitals for 1910. was the lowest
on record—namely, 7.83, as compared with 30 percent, before the
introduction of antitoxin. As shown on the graphic charts, the fall of
the death-rate is striking in all types of diphtheria cases.