DANGER IN INOCULATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 32, 8 February 1928, Page 6

DANGER IN INOCULATION.

In a recent issue of the "Star* tfee •- an article under the heading of "Danger ® Inoculation" signed "IT A Y." The writerseem= to be misinformed in stating that antitoxm had reduced diphtheria from over twenty-®* per cent down to less than three per cent people in New Zealand know that a dew? blow was given to antitoxin before Mr. J®* Lush and a jury in London in Octo® 1924. of which 1 have the verbatim report, which a part reads: "With the the antitoxin treatment came an method of diagnosis. Instead of the dipw*™ being diagnosed in the old-fashioned and, I consider, scientific way of physical sips symptoms, it became the fashion to dog®* ' by a germ. The result was that a. J3W many common sore throats that got well under any circumstances were as Professor Osier and other writers • to have associated with them the dipt . bacillus, and consequently they wcr ? . diphtheria. You can see that if J° u increased number of cases of eonMnon, throat thrown into the count the deatn will decrease. It is a reinarkablle » with the new method of diagnosis the . of cases increased materially. You h**® it here that in 1895 there were only j, of diphtheria. In 1596 they had H»crt»» 4000; in the next year the number o increased to 5000; in the next year • increased to 6000; in the next yevWincreased to S000; and the more of the* less, bacteriological diphtheria cases tB thrown into the count the less w* s . rate. May I put it in this way! you had, say, one hundred cases o:I and there were twenty-one deaths, , a death rate of twenty-one per cen ta2 ,^ r( . add to that one hundred cases two harmless eases of sore throat wrta in them that would not die a ' itg g»s you have three hundred cases, , rrg number of deaths, and you have rea twenty-one per cent down to tie That, is the statistical trick by whi statist ics arc worked. And that a PP , very book which in this and last H has admitted that there were over year and approximately 2000 thi» ' J taken diairim-i 4 - ot diphtheria whi<® a J sent to fc\cr hospitals in London * - .gj to the diphtheria death rate . JLjgeed; clear that antitoxin. « hich was HrjLjej! 1895. did not reduce the death raU. _. the lien re-: 1894, 29! deaths: IS9->» •***' $ •291; iy97. 240: IS9B, 243; 1899, This leaves u> with the same t * e yr. ofctai* six -sears of antitoxin as that wU -j before it. _ J. WKawakawa,