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48
illness, being to the extent of 10.8 and 14.5 per cent.
respectively. In this table (24) the comparison of percentage
mortality is made between all cases treated in 1894 and in
1895; but if the comparison is made between the cases (only)
treated with antitoxin during 1895, and cases treated in 1894,
when antitoxin was not in use, striking differences are
observed in the figures giving the results of treatment commenced upon the first and second day of illness; for in the
antitoxin cases the mortality for the first day is only 4.6 per
cent., and for the second day 14.8 per cent., whilst in 1894
the proportional mortality was 22.5 per cent. and 27 per cent.
respectively. Specially dangerous cases are those involving
the larynx, and which so frequently require the operation of
tracheotomy to avert impending death from suffocation.
Table 31 gives the combined results in tracheotomy cases.
Table 32 gives the combined results in all the laryngeal
cases, whether tracheotomised or not, and it is stated that
'the results are most satisfactory." With the object of
determining whether any advantage is gained over former
methods of treatment by the use of antitoxin in cases of
laryngeal diphtheria, the results obtained in all such cases
during the year 1895, are placed side by side with those
obtained in 1894 before the remedy was employed; and it is
seen (in tables 33-39) that the tracheotomy results at each
hospital are more favourable in the year 1895 than in 1894;
the mortality having ranged in the latter year, at the different
hospitals, between 90 per cent. and 59.4 per cent., whereas in
1895 the range was from 56.2 to 40.5 per cent. only. Table
39 shows that the combined tracheotomy mortality for all
the hospitals—which in 1894 was 70.4 per cent., had fallen to
49 4 per cent. in 1895; this being a lower death-rate than had
ever been recorded in any single hospital of the Board for a
year's consecutive tracheotomies. "In other words, rather
more than 50 per cent. of children on whom the operation
has been performed, have been saved since the employment
of antitoxin, In one of the hospitals no less than a fraction