Untitled

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17498, 5 July 1922, Page 3

The medical world commemorated a few weeks ago the centenary of Bretonneau's discovery of diphtheria. The dread malady, which, at various times has broken out in deadlv epidemics, costing' thousands of young lives, is not really.so modern, of course, as the anniversary suggests. It was known to the ancients as the "Jtogyptian Evil," and appeared in re " quent epidemics both in the British Islos and on the "Continent during the seventetmth and eighteenth centuries. But . was Pierre Bretonnoau, of Tcurs, who fif*t identified the symptoms in a collective diagnosis and defined, the diseaso in the celebrated treatise laid in 182-22 before the French Academy of Medi. ine. The famous Toura doctor also gave the disease the name, of Greek derivation, y which it is now known in medical test books throughout the world. The Bretonneau centenary was celebrated at Tours under distinguished medical ausnicea.