An inquiry into a characteristic organism of diphtheria / by Jabez Hogg.

  • Jabez Hogg
Date:
[1891]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into a characteristic organism of diphtheria / by Jabez Hogg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    5/13
    it would be the duty of officers of health to see cases of either removed from the family circle. This is no doubt as far as diphtheria is concerned a step in the right direction, but in my opinion it would be more in accord with the pathological relations of the two diseases mentioned, if the term croup, which after all is but a symptom common to other throat affections, had been abandoned, and that of '‘^membranous laryngitis substituted in its place; as herein lies the clinical difference?^ of a previous age. There were few excep- tions twenty or more years ago to the views then pretty generally accepted. The late Sir William Gull was a noteworthy exception, for in a letter of thanks for a copy of my pamphlet, he writes: “ I am on all grounds glad to receive your paper on croupous and diphtheritic membranes. I have on clinical grounds always regarded the confusion of croup proper with diphtheria as a pernicious error ; the two maladies have little in common besides the most superficial features,” Sir James Paget believed that the typical forms of membranous throat disease were the fibrinous and the corpuscular. The two diseases certainly widely differ in very many respects, not only etiologically but pathologically. The object I have more immediately in view is that of showing the broad line which separates the two diseases, and it will serve my purpose if I cite one or two generally- excepted features of each. Diphtheria is epidemic and endemic, and it attacks persons of all ages. Croup proper is essentially sporadic and non-contagious, usually met with in early life, that is during childhood. The combination of symptoms and associated pathological changes are so very different, that in my opinion, their nomenclature should be equally distinctive. It would, therefore, be in many ways more convenient to designate one diphtheritic membranous laryngitis, the other simply croupous laryngitis ; the membrane in connection