But not all of the dread of diphtheria went under its own name. Most of
us can still remember when the commonest occupant of the nursery shelf
was the bottle of ipecac or soothing-syrup as a specific against croup.
The thing that most often kept the mother or nurse of young children
awake and listening through the night-watches was the sound of a cough,
and the anxious waiting to hear whether the next explosion had a
"croupy" or brassy sound. It was, of course, early recognized that there
were two kinds of croup, the so-called "spasmodic" and the "membranous,"
the former comparatively common and correspondingly harmless, the latter
one of the deadliest of known diseases. The fear that made the mother's
heart leap into her mouth as she heard the ringing croup-cough was lest
it might be membranous, or, if spasmodic, might turn into the deadly
form later. To-day most young mothers hardly know the name of wine of
ipecac or alum, and the coughs of young children awaken little more
terror than a similar sound in an adult. Croup has almost ceased to be
one of the bogies of the nursery. And why? Because membranous croup has
been discovered to be diphtheria, and children will not develop
diphtheria unless they have been exposed to the contagion, while, if
they should be, we have a remedy against it.
He was a bold man who first ventured to announce this, and for years the
battle raged hotly. It was early admitted that certain cases of
so-called membranous croup in children occurred after or while other
members of the family or household had diphtheria; and for a time the
opposing camps used such words as "sporadic" or scattered croup, which
was supposed to come of itself, and "epidemic" or contagious croup,
which was diphtheria. Now, however, these distinctions are swept away,
and boards of health require isolation and quarantine against croup
exactly as against any other form of diphtheria.
Cases of fatal croup still occasionally occur which cannot be directly
traced to other cases of diphtheria, but the vast majority of them are
clearly traceable to infection, usually from some case in another child,
which was so mild that it was not recognized as diphtheria until the
baby became "croupy" and search was made through the family throats for
the bacilli.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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