CHAPTER XXI. 



DIPHTHERIA BACILLUS. 



History. The specific contagious disease which we 

 now call diphtheria, and, therefore, according to our 

 present belief, the bacilli which cause it, can be traced 

 back to almost the Homeric period of Grecian history. 

 The Greeks believed that it had been communicated to 

 their country from Egypt. The description of the 

 pharyngeal and laryngeal manifestations of this dis- 

 ease left by Aretseus leaves no doubt that it was of 

 diphtheria that he wrote. Galen, in his remarks on 

 the Chironion ulcer, tells us that the pseudomembrane 

 was gotten rid of by coughing in the laryngeal form 

 of the disease, and by hawking in the pharyngeal type. 

 From time to time during the next one thousand years 

 we hear of epidemics both in Italy and in other por- 

 tions of the civilized world which indicate that the 

 specific bacteria continued to be handed down from 

 case to case. In 1517 we read of a malignant form 

 of the disease raging in Switzerland, along the Rhine, 

 and in the Netherlands. In 1557 we read of further 

 epidemics in France, Germany, Holland, and Spain. 

 The disease now crossed to America, and in the New 

 England States we get clear accounts of its ravages. 

 Thus, Samuel Danforth, in 1659, Jost four of his eleven 

 children within a fortnight by a ( ' malady of the blad- 

 ders in the windpipe/' In 1765, Home, a Scotchman, 



