512 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



started the movement. Socialism, as the craving of the human 

 mind, has appeared through all history, but it has hitherto been a 

 desire mainly, not a force. Now it has become a power, and re- 

 sulted in a movement throughout the civilized world ; it will grow 

 like the current in the dynamo, but, like it too, as the leveling 

 downward of social inequalities goes on, it will raise up such a 

 repulsion against a dead uniformity, and especially against the 

 loss of those things which make life most worth living art, 

 music, architecture, education, and religion that crass commu- 

 nism and anarchy will be extinguished by that which they are now 

 evolving, and the doctrine of personal freedom will once more 

 arise to work in a new but greatly modified field. 







THE SERUM TREATMENT OF DIPHTHERIA. 



By SAMUEL TREAT ARMSTRONG, M. D., Ph. D., 



VISITING PHYSICIAN TO THE HOSPITAL FOR CONTAGIOUS DISEASES, NEW TOEK. 



IT is almost seventy-four years since Bretonneau submitted to 

 the Paris Academy of Medicine a report on croup and malig- 

 nant sore throat, in which he maintained that a number of differ- 

 ently named diseases that were characterized by a membranous 

 inflammation of the fauces and upper part of the air passages 

 constituted but one specific disease, for which he proposed the 

 name diphtheria. But the confusion he hoped to dissipate by the 

 use of a generic term was maintained until recent years, notwith- 

 standing the familiar employment of that term in medical nomen- 

 clature. There are few to whom its sound is unassociated with 

 dread, for old and young, rich and poor, are alike susceptible to 

 its infection. 



In 1883 Prof. Edwin Klebs discovered, and in 1884 Prof. F. 

 LoeJBier succeeded in isolating and cultivating, the micro-organ- 

 ism now known as the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, that is generally 

 accepted as the productive agent of diphtheria. These bacilli, in- 

 oculated upon an abraded mucous membrane of animals suscep- 

 tible to diphtheria, produce false membranes, systemic disturb- 

 ances, and even death ; they are found in the nasal and throat 

 secretions and in the diphtheria membrane ; microscopically they 

 occur in the form of straight or curved rods that stain, with ani- 

 line dyes, most intensely at the ends, and thus present a dumb-bell 

 appearance. Imbedded in organic matter and protected from 

 the light, the bacilli may keep alive for many months outside of 

 the animal organism. Uncleanliness, accumulations of dirt, and 

 particularly dark, damp rooms favor the preservation of the ba- 

 cilli and the propagation of the disease. This bacillus has never 



