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150
1934. For this year Birmingham shows 1,015 cases and 84 deaths,
yet there were only 9 mild cases and no deaths amongst 60,000
inoculated persons. For the ten-year period (1925 to the present
time) there occurred in Birmingham some 10,000 cases and over
630 deaths among children under 15 years of age who had not been
inoculated. In the same period there have been 29 mild cases and
no deaths among some 70,000 inoculated children.
The cost of antitoxin as used by our Fever Hospital has fallen
from £2,040 in 1930 to £797 in 1934. It has been calculated that
for 1933 when the total of diphtheria cases fell to the very low
figure of 417, the City saved some £22,000. But even more
important than this was the release of wards that would otherwise
have accommodated diphtheria cases for the treatment of measles,
whooping cough, etc. Prior to 1931 it was not found possible to
accommodate in any degree in the Fever Hospital those latter cases,
owing to the lack of beds.
Rightly the nation exclaims against the toll of the roads and
maternal mortality, but equally reasonable and cogent would be
any outcry directed against the annihilation of young life through
neglect to immunise it as a measure of safety against diphtheria.
In the meantime a few thousand pounds merely are being spent
annually in this country on the eradication of diphtheria, which
caused the illness last year of some 69,000 persons and 4,000 deaths,
the great bulk of those deaths taking place in young children.
I am forced to the conclusion, despite the great progress made
in Birmingham which has done more than any other great city
towards the stamping out of this disease, that the mass of the
human race remain apathetic and that the apathy is due to thoughtlessness,
superstition and prejudice. Until these are banished,
diphtheria, a preventable disease, must slay 3,000 to 4,000 children
each year, though inoculation could prevent it.
It is estimated that one in every ten children born will suffer
from diphtheria before 15 years of age and that one in 300 will die
from it. Our results in Birmingham show that where children
have been immunised, only one in 2,500 suffer from the disease
and that no death occurs."
Dr. W. J. Pearson.
"Sequelae of Diphtheria seen in General Hospitals.
The chief point of interest of diphtheria in the present connection
is the fact that it may remain undiscovered because either the
original throat symptoms have not been unduly severe, or else the