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brought to my notice that the children of this medical
man, with whom the patient had been associating till
within a few days of his illness, had all been suffering
from a mild form of sore throat, which had in no case been
suspected to be of a diphtheritic nature. I thereupon
communicated the facts of this child's illness, and the
confirmation of the diagnosis by culture, to the father of
these children; drawing his attention to the extreme
probability of their having also had this disease in a mild
form. His reply was to the effect that he had had no
suspicion at the time that it could have been diphtheria;
but that they had now all recovered, and that it might
well have been so.
The moral here is the advisability of having a bacteriological
examination of the discharges from the throat
made when two or more sore throats occur in a household.
The diagnosis of diphtheria was confirmed by bacteriological
examination in about half the cases notified, it
would be desirable if that means of diagnosis were freely
resorted to in all dubious cases of throat illness, for besides
making certain that about which there may have previously
been considerable doubt, it would also tend to prevent
cases being notified and treated as diphtheria that are
nothing of the sort. Such errors are not difficult to make
and they occasionally happen. The last two cases were
at the end of November in one household. A patient had
been submitted to an operation, and was attended by a
hospital nurse. The wound did not do satisfactorily, and
some septic mischief was feared, and the drainage of the
house suspected. Then the nurse fell ill with a sore
throat, and went to a London hospital, where diphtheria
was diagnosed. The theory advanced was that diphtheria
poison had attacked the operation wound, and that the