positive,
and simple method of deciding at the very earliest stage. We merely take
a sterilized swab of cotton on the end of a wire, rub it gently over the
surface of the throat and tonsils, restore it to its glass tube,
smearing it over the surface of some solidified blood-serum placed at
the bottom of the tube, close the tube and send it to the nearest
laboratory. The culture is put into an incubator at body heat, the germs
sown upon the surface of the blood-serum grow and multiply, and in
twelve hours a positive diagnosis can be made by examining this growth
with a microscope. Often, just smearing the mucus swabbed out of the
throat over the surface of a glass slide, staining this smear, and
putting it under a microscope, will enable us to decide within an hour.
These tubes are now provided by all progressive city boards of health,
and can be had free of charge at depots scattered all over the city, for
use in any doubtful case, within half an hour. Twelve hours later a free
report can be had from the public laboratory. If every case of
suspicious sore throat in a child were promptly swabbed out, and a smear
from the swab examined at a laboratory, it would not be long before
diphtheria would be practically exterminated, as smallpox has been by
vaccination, and this is what we are working toward and looking forward
to.

Our knowledge of the precise cause of diphtheria, the Klebs-Loeffler
bacillus, has furnished us not only with the cure, but also with the
means of preventing its spread. While under certain circumstances,
particularly the presence of moisture and the absence of light, this
germ may live and remain virulent for weeks outside of the body, careful
study of its behavior under all sorts of conditions has revealed the
consoling fact that its vitality outside of the human or some other
living animal body is low; so that it is relatively seldom carried from
one case to another by articles of clothing, books, or toys, and
comparatively seldom even through a third party, except where the latter
has come into very close contact with the disease, like a doctor, a
nurse, or a mother, or--without disrespect to the preceding--a pet cat
or dog.

More than this, the bacillus must chiefly be transmitted in the moist
condition and does not float in the air at all, clinging only to such
objects as may have become smeared with the mucus from the child's
throat, as by being coughed or sneezed upon. As with most of our
ge