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37
The Antitoxic Treatment of Diphtheria.—I
dealt somewhat fully in the annual report for 1896 (page 46)
with this subject, in connection with the first annual report
(for 1895) of the Medical Superintendents of the Asylums
Board Hospitals, setting out their combined experience on
antitoxin. The conclusion arrived at was that in antitoxic
serum they possessed " a remedy of distinctly greater value
in the treatment of diphtheria " than any other with which
they were acquainted. The second annual report (for 1896),
published last year, confirms the favourable opinion of the
serum as a remedy for this dire disease, and even extends it,
better results having been shown in respect to the rate of
recovery in laryngeal cases, and in children of the age-group
1-5 years : laryngeal cases being especially dangerous, whilst
the mortality in the young, under any other description of
treatment, is very great. The new remedy was used in a
larger proportion of the cases in 1896, than in 1895—in all, indeed,
save the mild ones and those found to be moribund on
admittance. The rate of mortality in cases in which the
antitoxic serum was used on the first day of disease, was
only 5.2 per cent., the rate for all cases admitted to the
hospitals during the year having been 20.8 per cent.
How Disease is Spread.—Of the four deaths from
diphtheria recorded in the fifth report (May 27th, page 57),
one was that of a female child aged three years, who was
apparently infected by her father, whose ailment had been regarded
and treated as common sore throat. The family medical
attendant contracted the disease and died, having been
infected by either the child or her father, whose illness
apparently originated in the city at offices found to be in an
insanitary condition. Two of this gentleman's clerks had
previously suffered from sore throats, the presumably specific
character of which had not been recognized.
A more serious outbreak was chronicled in the eleventh
report (November 10th, page 131), ten cases having occurred