DIPHTHERIA IN CATS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8300, 5 July 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

DIPHTHERIA IN CATS.

Medical men have now for ?omo time had their attention drawn to disease in the lower animals coincident with diphtheria in the human subject, and reason has been found for suspecting domestic animals to bo concerned in the spread of epidemics of diphtheria and other allied throat diseases. Dr. Turner, the Hertfordshire health officer, in particular, has reported on the existence of a malady of a diphtheritic nature in various of the lower animals, especially in cats, and he has adduced instances in which domestic pets have been the first to sutler in localised outbreaks. Dr. Bruce Low, in reporting on an extensive epidemic of diphtheria in Enfield in ISSB, drew attention to the largo number of cats that suffered at the time, there being an unusual mortality among them ;,and heqnotedan instance where a boy ill of diphtheria infected a cat, which in turn infected a second cat, the latter being flic playfellow of four little girls, who nursed it- during it* illness, and themselves, one and all, contracted the disease, no other source of infection being discoverable. The same sort of evidence comes to us from America. Hut a distinct advance lias since been made in connection with the etiology of diphtheria, and Dr. Klein, in a report contained in the volume just issued by the Medical Department of the Local (Government Board in ISSB, details experiments which he has made on cats with human diphtheritic membrane, and gives an account also of his inoculation of rodents and birds with the false membrane of the disease. in regard to these two latter the results wore indefinite, but thoy were notable where cats wore used, in fact, upon inoculat ion of these animals, Dr. Klein has produced pathological conditions which have general similarity to those of diphtheria in the human, and which are found capable of being reproduced by inoculation into other healthy cats. These results are extremely significant, and one cannot but think that if the Bard of Avon were with us now the accumulated evidence against poor pussy as a disseminator of fatal disease would have led him to modify somewhat his opinion concerning "the harmless, necessary cat."