RAVAGES OF DIPHTHERIA

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4321, 23 September 1921, Page 1

RAVAGES OF DIPHTHERIA

Is "dip." doomed ?, 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 York casualty list of many thousands per annum. It is true J 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 ppwer of antitoxin. , What is it ? • A clue will be afforded by the following “remarks” appended by Dr. McL.. to a case report furnished to the Ontario Board of Health ; “I saw this case half an hour before death. The child had been sick all week without medical attendance, the parents thinking it a case of tonsilitis. What a tragic mistake !. And how often it is made. The. absence of alarming symptoms until too late in the disease, .the commonness of “sore throats,” added to the fact that antitoxin is a perfect remedy only in the early stages of diphtheria, have meant fpr many thousands of parents a parent’s greatest grief. And such mistakes will be made 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 dppmefi? Dr Lina Potter says, so (in other words) in a calculated statement which is published in “The International Journal of Public Health.” She bases her hopefulprophecy on two recent discoveries: the Schick reaction and the- toxinantitoxin immunisation. By the first of these methods doctors are now able to find out whether or not a child is liable to catch diphtheria. If the child is naturally immune, well and good; if he br she is found to be susceptible, the second metho.! is invoked to produce an immunity. The injection of toxin-antitoxin is absolutely harmless, and produces an immunity which probably lasts a child through the dangerous early years of life. As Dr. Potter says, if the news is spread abroad there will be a demand for this protection. Already a great experiment has been begun by the New York City thev have undertaken to immunise, with parents* consent, 25,000 children in the. kindergartens and primary grade schools of Manhattan. Already it is found that half tlie parents are anxious to have their children made safe, and the demand has become so great that the New York Health Department has made special arrangements for a free supply of the needful materials to doctors in that city.