MR. "GEORGE BROWN" ON THE TREATMENT OF DIPHTHERIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 198, 19 August 1904, Page 2

MR. "GEORGE BROWN" ON THE TREATMENT OF DIPHTHERIA.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Mr. "George Brown," who gives no address, and whom therefore I cannot identify among the fifteen George Browns in the Auckland Directory, is kind enough Lo remind mc that when 1 took my degree 1 was sworn not to keep secret any treatment I might use. I do not remember if this were so, as it is forty-eight years since I took my. degree, and swore a long Latin oath about a great many things. But this has nothing to do with the question. 1 never "stated that the death-rate of diphtheria treated by mc, by my own methods, was a.3 low aa those treated with anti-toxic serum." What I said was: "I have been attending cases of diphtheria ever since it first appeared in London in the fifties, and have never yet had, in any j hundred eases taken consecutively, a larger mortality than that to which this treatment has brought down the mortality in the London Asylum Board Infirmaries, namely., 11 per cent. lam sure that 10 per cent, would more than cover my i mortality." { I do not for one moment claim that the relatively small mortality (for 10 per cent, is actually a very high mortality) j in the cases 1 "have seen was due to my ' treatment. It was due in all but a very small number of cases to the mildness of the attack. Even in those cases that I thought might have succumbed to the disease without treatment, I could not be sure that my especial treatment cured j the case. Suppose I say, which is a fact, that during more than fifty years I have never seen a fatal case of mumps—does this imply that my treatment is to be crediteu with the result? As a matter of tact, the ii 2 cases I saw j consecutively without a death were cases j that occurred towards the end of an epi- i demic, mild cases that would probably J have recovered if no treatment whatever ; had been adopted. But 1 judge not merely by the cases I have actually attended, but by numbers of others that one hears of in an epidemic. Since i came to Auckland i have seen very ; few cases of diphtheria. I could not say :how many, for I made a bonfire of a lot of my old note-books when I was at Mount Eden, but certainly not an average of one per annum during the seventeen years I have been here. Yet I have a general impression that the mortality has not exceeded 10 per cent, in Auckland. I suppose that whit happens here happens also jin London, that the mild cases are for the most part treated at home, and only the worst cases sent to the hospitals. I I am certainly not going to fill a cijlumn of the "Star" with an account of my treatment of diphtheria, in which, by the way, there is nothing original, as I found in a medical record sent to mc from New York by the last mail, a practitioner of about my own age wa3 stating that he used exactly the same preparations, and | in exactly the same way as I use them, j If Mr '"George Brown" will send mc 3d I in stamps and his address I will send him ' v little book I published in Christehurch j more than twenty years ago, which con- ! tains a pretty full account of my treatment of diphtheria, and of several other diseases. I have no doubt that he will be very much interested, as he has been by my articles on the microbes. If I thought "George ' were really his name I could tell him a good story about "George."—l am, etc., R. H. BAKEWELL, M.D. Ponsonby road, August 18, 1904.