IS DIPHTHERIA DOOMED

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 686, 22 November 1921, Page 2

IS DIPHTHERIA DOOMED

A HOPEFUL PROPHECY. It seems a strange Question to ask, just when diptheria has been busy breaking epidemic records in the Old World, and when it still has a New World casualty list of many thousands per annum. It is true that since the discovery of the serum treatment ,the mortality has been reduced to less than half of what it used to be, but beyond a certain stage the reduction does not proceed. Something is hindering the saving power of antitoxin. What is it ? A clue will be afforded by the following “remarks” appended bv Dr L. M’L. to a case report furnished to the Ontario Board of Health. “I saw this case half an hour before The child had been sick all the week without medical attendance, the parents thinking it a case of tonsilitis. The patient was comatose when I saw him first.” What a tragic mistake !■ And how often it is made. The absence of alarming symptoms until too lq(te in the disease, the commonness of “sore throats,” added to the fact that antitoxin is a perfect remedy only in the early stages of diptheria, have meant for many thousands of parents a parent’s greatest grief. And' such mistakes will be mjade for many years, for the health education of the public will not be completed in this generation. Who then dares to say that “Dip,” is doomed ? Dr Lina Poster says so (in other words) in a calculated statement which is published in the International Journal of Public Health. She bases her hopeful prophecy on two recent discoveries — Schick reaction and! the (toxin-anti-toxin immunization. By the first of these methods doctors are now able to find out whether or no;t a child is liable to catch diptheria. If the child is maturally immune, well and good; if'he or she is found to be susceptible the second method is invoked do produce immunity. The injection to toxin-antitoxin is absolutely harmless, and produces an immunity which probably lasts a child through the dangerous oarly days of life. As Dr Potter says, if ’the news is spread abroa’d there will be a demand for protection. Already a great experiment has been begun by the New York Chapter of the American Red Cross. At the request of *the Commissioner of Health of New York City they have undertaken to immunize, with the parents’ consent, 25,000 children in the kindergartens and prirriary grade schools of Manhattan. Already it is 'found that half of the parents are anxious" to have their children made safe, and che demand has become so great that the New York Health Department has made special arrangements for a free supply of dhe needful materials to doctors in that city.