Abstract
DIPHTHERIA is one of the best understood human bacterial diseases and its study has enriched bacteriology with several ideas of prime importance. The isolation of the bacillus by Loeffler (1884) provided a means of precise diagnosis: the discovery of antitoxin by Behring (1890) opened up an entirely new field in prevention and therapy. Theobald Smith (1907) saw the possibility of making people immune by the inoculation of toxin: Schick (1908) made this practicable by devising his simple test for individual immunity. Diphtheria is also the disease in which it was first shown that the lesions could be produced by toxin without the bacilli and in which the possibility of becoming immune by subinfection without any actual illness was first clearly recognised.
Diphtheria, Past and Present: its Ætiology, Distribution, Transmission and Prevention.
By Dr. J. Graham Forbes. Pp. xx + 832. (London: John Bale, Sons, and Danielsson, Ltd., 1932.) 45s. net.
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Diphtheria, Past and Present: its Ætiology, Distribution, Transmission and Prevention . Nature 131, 150 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131150a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131150a0