Simple as these methods sound, they are extremely troublesome to put into execution, and require the greatest skill and judgment in their carrying out. But intelligent persistence in the careful elaboration of these methods of nature has resulted in already cutting the death-rate in two,--from fifteen or twenty per cent to less than ten per cent,--and where the full rigor of the tub bath is carried out it has been brought down to as low as five per cent. Meanwhile the bacteriologists are steadily at work on a vaccine or antitoxin. Wright, of the English Army Medical Staff, has already secured a serum, which has given remarkable results in protecting regiments sent out to South Africa and other infected regions. Chantemesse has imported some six hundred successive cases treated with an antitoxin, whose mortality was only about a third of the ordinary hospital rate, and the future is full of promise. CHAPTER X DIPHTHERIA That was a dark and stern saying, "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission," and, like all the words of the oracles, of limited application. But it proves true in some unexpected places outside of the realm of theology. Was there something prophetic in the legend that it was only by the sprinkling of the blood of the Paschal Lamb above the doorway that the plague of the firstborn could be stayed? To-day the guinea-pig is our burnt offering against a plague as deadly as any sent into Egypt. Scarcely more than a decade ago, as the mother sat by the cradle of her firstborn, musing over his future, one moment fearfully reckoning the gauntlet of risks that his tiny life had to run, and the next building rosy air-castles of his happiness and success, there was one shadow that ever fell black and sinister across his tiny horoscope. Certain risks there were which were almost inevitable,--initiation ceremonies into life, mild expiations to be paid to the gods of the modern underworld, the diseases of infancy and of childhood. Most of these could be passed over with little more than a temporary wrinkle to break her smile. They were so trivial, so comparatively harmless: measles, a mere reddening of the eyelids and peppering of the throat, with a headache and purplish rash, dangerous only if neglected; chicken-pox, a child's-play at disease; scarlatina, a little more serious, but still with the chances of twenty to one in favor of recovery; diphtheria--ah! that drove the smile from her face and the blood from her lips. Not quite so common, not so inevitable as a prospect, but, as a possibility, full of terror, once its poison had passed the gates of the body fortress. The fight between the Angel of Life and the Angel of Death was waged on almost equal terms, with none daring to say which would be the victor, and none able to lift a hand with any certainty to aid.