Fibrinous or membranous rhinitis and its relation to diphtheria / by H. Lambert Lack ; (communicated by Allan Macfadyen).

  • Lack, Harry Lambert, 1867-1943.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fibrinous or membranous rhinitis and its relation to diphtheria / by H. Lambert Lack ; (communicated by Allan Macfadyen). 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.

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    Joharmessen examined the throats of twenty healthy children in the ward of a hospital in which a case of diphtheria had occurred. He found virulent diphtheria bacilli present in three cases. Later, another case of diphtheria having occurred, he found the bacilli present in four out of eighteen healthy throats. Aaser in similar circumstances, an outbreak of diph- theria in a soldiers^ barracks, found the Klebs-Loffler bacilli in seventeen out of eighty-nine healthy throats, that is 19 ]3er cent. In an outbreak amongst some children, bacilli were found in 20 per cent. Maude reports finding bacilli in eighty-nine out of 214 healthy people exposed to infection, that is in 41 per cent. Maude also reports that diphtheria bacilli were present in forty out of 148 cases of angina said not to be diphtheritic, that is in 27 per cent. Muller finds the Klebs-Loffler bacilli present in twenty-seven cases out of 100 healthy children with normal throats—curiously the exact proportion in which Maude found them present in cases of non-diph- theritic angina. Thomas found the diphtheria bacillus (usually non-virulent) in nasal discharge in eighty out of 326 cases examined, that is 24 per cent. ; and Vassant found them in similar circumstances in twenty-six cases out of 100 examinations. These investigations show conclusively that the Klebs- Loffler bacillus is found commonly in the normal throats of healthy people who have not been exposed to diph- theritic infection, although not quite so commonly as in those who have been exposed to it; that the bacillus is found just as frequently in cases with normal throats as in cases with non-diphtheritic angina ; that the bacillus commonly occurs in the healthy nose, and is found in about 25 per cent, of all cases with any form of nasal discharge. Conclusions.—It has been claimed that just as the tubercle bacillus when found in any morbid condition is the decisive test of the tubercular nature of the affection,
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