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Dunstan Times, Issue 3132, 28 August 1922, Page 8

The medical world this year commemorates the centenary of Brotanneau's discovery of diphtheria. The dread malady, which at various times has broken out in deadly epidemics, costing thousands of young lives, in notreal ly so modern, of course, as the anniversary suggests. It was known to the ancients as the "Egypt-inn Evil," and appeared' in frequent epidemics, both, in the British Isles ami on the Continent during the 17th and 18th centuries. But it was Pierre Brefonneau, of Tours, who first identified the symptoms in a. collective diagnosis and deli ncd the disease in the celebrated treatise laid in 1821-22, before the French Academy of Medicine. The famous Tours doctor gave the d'isease the name, of Greek derivation, by which it is now known in medical text-books throughout the world.