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 Areteeus 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, 
