I desire to express my appreciation of the honor conferred on me by your chairman, our highly esteemed Chicago hygienist, in inviting me to deliver before this Section an address on diphtheria. The occurrence of a prolonged illness of a member of my family, which terminated fatally, compels me to limit myself to a few outlines of personal observation, as a contribution to the discussion on the disease, the germ of which I have had the fortune to detect.
While acknowledging the success of serotherapy of diphtheria, the doubts expressed by Kassowitz and others only show that we must not neglect to exert all our intellectual powers and to improve our scientific methods with a view of achieving better results. We have still to progress in the development and execution of our prophylactic measures, particularly as regards the destruction of germs in the soil, air and food.
The first object