DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN 



139 



paration of the serum, with a host of expert 

 colleagues : the adminstration of the treatment 

 was the work of the medical officers of the hospitals 

 of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The serum 

 was used for a few weeks only in 1894; tne cases 

 thus treated were excluded from the statistical 

 tables for that year. Thus, 1894 was tne l ast non_ 

 antitoxin year, and 1895 was tne fi rst antitoxin year. 



The percentage of mortality from diphtheria 

 in all the Board hospitals together is as follows. 

 The disease was first admitted in 1888 : this year 

 is therefore reckoned as incomplete : — 



1888 (incomplete year) 



59-35 



1895 (first antitoxin 





1889 .... 



40.74 



year) 



22.55 



1890 .... 



33-55 



1896 .... 



20.80 



1891 .... 



30-63 



1897 .... 



17.50 



1892 . . . 



29-35 



1898 .... 



15.50 



1893 . . . . 



30.42 



1899 .... 



14.05 



1894 . . . . 



29.64 



1900 .... 



12.01 



The experiences of 1895 are given in the follow- 

 ing passages from the joint report to the Board 

 from the medical superintendents : — 



" The period covered by the report extends from 

 1 st January 1895 t0 3 Ist December of the same 

 year. During this time — with the exception of an 

 interval of three months at the Eastern Hospital, 

 when its use was suspended ; of three months at 

 the Fountain, and to a considerable extent through- 

 out the year at the South-Eastern Hospital, when 

 all cases were consecutively treated, irrespective of 

 their severity — -the serum was administered only to 

 cases which at the time of admission were severe, or 

 which threatened to become so. In a certain number, 



