furnish accurate diagnosis,
and the use of antitoxin will prevent the disease.

_Symptoms of diphtheria._

The disease itself acts on the human body through the formation of
poisons which the bacteria generate by their growth. If the germs have
secured a foothold in the upper throat, then the well-known membrane is
formed and the toxins produced spread through the blood and cause
headache and fever, even before any experience of sore throat is felt.
The temperature rises very high, the child begins to vomit, and the
pulse becomes weak, and after about seven days a large percentage of
these throat cases begin to improve. The membrane breaks off, the fever
declines, and the child begins to recover. If the localized attack is in
the larynx, a harsh cough is one of the symptoms, and this is soon
followed by a serious difficulty in breathing.

The poisons are formed, as before, in the blood, and, while a surgical
operation has been performed often in the past to afford relief from the
tendency to strangulation, the bacterial poisons are not affected
thereby, and, while the operation might be successful, the child was
quite apt to die as the result of the poisons. Now, in either case,
antitoxin is administered at the very outset of the attack, with the
result that the poisons are counteracted, the temperature drops rapidly,
the membrane is apparently at once affected and lessened, and the child
recovers at once. No greater boon to the human race in the matter of
disease has ever been discovered, and it is certainly most absurd for
parents to refuse the use of this wonderful antidote. Not long since,
the writer found a family of four children in a home where diphtheria
was rampant. The mother and two children were sick with diphtheria in
its worst form, and the father refused to allow the doctor to administer
the antitoxin even to those sick, much less to those who had been, up to
that time, only exposed. Apparently there was no direct law requiring
the administration of the antitoxin, and the physician in attendance and
the health officer were obliged to stand by and wait for the death of
the children, which actually happened, knowing that a dose of the
antitoxin ready at hand could have been administered and the children's
lives, in all probability, saved.

The diphtheria poison is so virulent that in many cases it acts on the
different organs of the body, particularly on the kidneys and the heart,
and the recovery from