Notes on the early history of diphtheria in the United States / by John C. Peters.

  • Peters, John C. (John Charles), 1819-1893.
Date:
[1876?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on the early history of diphtheria in the United States / by John C. Peters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    h evidently to show that the disease was propagated by infection, yet children and young people were only subject to it, with the excep- tions of some people above 20 or 30 years old. and a very few aged people who died of it. Neither did it spread equally to all places that were proportionately exposed to the infection. The poorer sort of people were more liable to it, and they who lived on low and wet grounds and on a poor scorbutic diet. In some places only a few persons or families were seized; while in others, all escaped. In some families it pass- ed like a plague through all their children; in others, only one or two were seized. Some were attacked at such a distance from the infected, that it could not be conceived in what manner they receiv- ed infection. Some families had the disease mildly, while others in the same place and at the same time had it most violently. For the last 14 years it has frequently broken out in different families and places, without any previous observable cause; but does not spread as it did at first. Sometimes a few only have it in a considerable neighborhood. It seems as if some seeds, or leaven, or secret cause remains, wherever it goes; for I hear of like obser- vations in other parts of the country. Several have been observed to have had it, more than once. Nausea, or vomiting is seldom observed to accompany it. The skin is seldom parched. The pulse is usually low, but frequent and irregular. No considerable thirst. The tongue is much furred, and the furring sometimes extends all over the tonsils, as far as the eye can reach. At other times, in the milder kind, the tonsils appear only swelled and dotted with white specks of about }{ or }4 inch in diameter, which are thrown off from time to time, in tough, cream- colored sloughs; but these are soon again renewed. Sometimes the throat is swelled inwardly and outwardly, so as to endanger suffoca- tion. In some seasons it has been accompanied with miliary eruptions all over the skin; and at such times the symptoms about the throat have been mild, and the disease generally without danger. (Scar- latinous diphtheria.) Some have had sores with corrosive humors behind their ears, on the private and other parts of the body. (Cutaneous diphtheria.) The last complaint commonly is of an oppression or straitness in the upper part of the chest, with difficulty of breathing, and a