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Osler, one of the greatest living medical authorities, mentions repeatedly in his works that the bacilli of diphtheria, pneumonia and of many other virulent diseases are found in the bodies of healthy persons. The inability of bacteria, by themselves, to create diseases is further confirmed by the well-known facts of natural immunity to specific infection or contagion.
He planted little stitches in the small of the back, sought out old aches and weak joints, and sportively punched the tenants of the Swiss Cottage under the ribs. He inveigled little children to play with him, but his plays generally ended in scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping-cough, and measles. He sometimes followed strong men about until they sickened suddenly and took to their beds.
Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairs in her nightgown, a shaken helpless figure, asking countless questions of those that hurried past. But they reassured her, and after a time she went downstairs and made a pot of coffee. Ensconced with it in the lower hall, and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid them with it as they hurried up and down. Upstairs the battle went on.
The shadow of the angel of death lay over the house: the child was suffering from diphtheria. Either father or mother must take the other children away. He refused. The mother took them to a little house in one of the suburbs and the father remained at home to nurse the invalid. There she lay!
He usually took dinner at six o'clock, and then, after an hour devoted to meditation, he mounted a barrel and crowed a good part of the night. He got hoarser all the time, but he scorned to allow any personal consideration to interfere with his duty, and kept up his labors in defiance of threatened diphtheria. Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch.
This circumstance attaches special importance to sore-throat in young children, since it will usually be found to betoken the approach of scarlet fever, or of diphtheria, rather than the existence of simple inflammation, or quinsey.
The man got a furlough, came home, and was confined to his bed for some time. It was reported about the neighborhood that he had a spell of fever. The woman who brought the diphtheria to us sought our house as a place of refuge, because the house being "low and in a low place" the cannon balls would pass over it. After the Lord saved me, this incident came to my mind as a lesson in humility.
In the same way an outbreak of cholera or diphtheria once sent people in their thousands to the churches and chapels; now it sends them to the drains, and while prayers proved but a poor prophylactic against epidemics, the most pious credulity now places unbounded faith in a sanitary system approved by a first-class surveyor.
I believe that all generous-hearted men feel just the same way about it. However, that is not the point I am intending to discuss. What I want to speak about is the progress of medicine. There, if you like, is something wonderful. Just think of it. A hundred years ago there were no bacilli, no ptomaine poisoning, no diphtheria, and no appendicitis.
About twenty years ago, two great scientists, one a Frenchman named Roux a student of the great Professor Louis Pasteur, of whom I am sure you have heard and the other, a German, named Behring, discovered an antitoxin for diphtheria; that is, something to defeat the poison of the diphtheria germ. When this antitoxin is injected into the blood, it will cure diphtheria.
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