Diphtheria: its natural history and prevention.

  • Thorne, R. Thorne (Richard Thorne), Sir, 1841-1899.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diphtheria: its natural history and prevention. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    on further inquiry, that the only part of the mansion in which substantial and fairly successful efforts had been made to remedy the generally prevailing drain defects was precisely the one which the young man almost exclusively occupied both by day and by night Pre- vious inquiry of the local medical officer of health had, however, failed to ascertain the existence of any ante- cedent attacks in the neighbourhood \ no case of throat disease had been seen by him or reported to him, and it seemed clear that none had occurred in the mansion itself If any such disease had prevailed in an unrecognised form the elementary schools would, I felt convinced, give some evidence of it, and hence I suggested that the school teachers should be requested to draw up a list of all scholars who had been absent from school on any occa- sion between the middle of the preceding September and the end of December, together with a statement as to the cause of the alleged absence. It was soon found that no account could be taken of the statements of the scholars in the Infant School, where children at the age- period most susceptible to diphtheria—namely three to five years—were to be found. But amongst the scholars in three other schools, having collectively an average attendance of 307 pupils, there had been a considerable number of absentees during the period in question, and in no less than fifty-seven instances was some form of sore-throat assigned as the cause of the absence. In one of these three schools the convalescents were examined, and five cases of well-marked diphtheritic