Of course there were many disappointments and failures in the earlier cases. Our first antitoxins were too weak and too variable. We were afraid to use them in sufficient doses. Often their injection would not be consented to until the case had become hopeless. But courage and industry have conquered these difficulties one after another, until now the fact that the prompt and intelligent use of antitoxin will effect a cure of from ninety to ninety-five per cent of all cases of diphtheria is as thoroughly established as any other fact in medicine. The mass of figures from all parts of the world in support of its value has become so overwhelming that it is neither possible nor necessary to specify them in detail. The series of Bayeaux, covering two hundred and thirty thousand cases of diphtheria, chiefly from hospitals and hence of the severest type, showing that the death-rate had been reduced from over _fifty-five_ per cent to below _sixteen_ per cent already, and that this decrease was still continuing, will serve as a fair sample. Three-quarters of even this sixteen per cent mortality is due to delay in the administration of the antitoxin, as is vividly shown in thousands of cases now on record, classified according to the day of the disease on which the antitoxin was given, of which MacCombie's "Report of the London Asylums Board" is a fair type. Of one hundred and eighty-seven cases treated the first day of the disease, none died; of eleven hundred and eighty-six injected on the second day of the disease, four and a half per cent died; of twelve hundred and thirty-three not treated until the third day of the disease, eleven per cent died; of nine hundred and sixty-three cases escaping treatment until the fourth day, seventeen per cent died; while of twelve hundred and sixty not seen until the fifth day, twenty per cent died. In other words, the chances for cure by the antitoxin are in precise proportion to the earliness with which it is administered, and are over four times as great during the first two days of the disease as they are after the fourth day. One "stick" in time saves five.