SO MICROBES AXD HEALTH. 



second, perhaps, to none, and is undoubtedly true. 

 They state that carbolic acid or other antiseptics are 

 incorporated during the process of manufacture, and 

 this destroys that part of Merck's reply in which they 

 state that antitoxin serum was ever used alone. 



In the Medical Visitor for March, 1900, page 143, is 

 the following article from the Wisconsin Medical 

 Recorder, showing the folly of mortality statistics for 

 diphtheria as furnished by the bacteriologists, who 

 claimed such a high death-rate before antitoxin was 

 used: 



"Those cities which now have a low general death-rate 

 from all causes also show, as would be expected, a low 

 diphtheria death-rate. This is true of Chicago and 

 Milwaukee. New York City, which at present has a 

 very low general death-rate compared with many years 

 in the past, naturally has a corresponding low diph- 

 theria mortality. 



"It is a common assumption that the mortality from 

 diphtheria used to be 40 per cent before antitoxin times, 

 which is as absurd as it is untrue. Certainly at times 

 40 per cent of the patients died. The mortality was 

 very much higher than 40 per cent in some epidemics. 

 Ferrand in 1827 related that in an epidemic all of the 

 60 patients died. Bretonneau in 1826 quoted Carne- 

 vale as saying that in Chiaja near Naples the greater 

 part of those attacked succumbed. Ozonam's sum- 

 ming up of 39 epidemics from 1559 to 1805 showed 

 80 per cent mortality. Then the tables of epidemics 

 from 1805 to 1830, made by the Academic Royale de 

 Medicine, gives the death-rate as 25 per cent. But 



