Page:Diphtheria - a lecture delivered at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital (IA b22345656).pdf/6

 believe that the variety of throat-affection with which we are now more immediately concerned is a disease till the last few years practically unknown to the profession of this kingdom, though familiar to the continent from the time that Bretonneau described it under the title of “dipthérite.” Some writers, however, it should be said, are disposed to doubt the novelty of the disease in this country, and profess to have discovered a record of it in some of the older authors; but it is not difficult to show that there are no good grounds for such an opinion, and that the description of the appearances in the throat supposed by these writers to refer to that peculiar membrane which I believe to be pathognomonic of the disease, is in fact a description of the ash-coloured sloughs seen in gangrenous affections of the throat, and can in no way be regarded as a portraiture of the adventitious exudation of true diphtheria. Certain it is that the surgeons of this district, with several of whom I have been in correspondence on the subject, either by letter or in consultation, have unhesitatingly admitted that they had to deal with a disease which to them was perfectly new. Such was my own impression also, for with no inconsiderable familiarity with anginous affections as they are seen connected with the eruptive fevers, and in their idiopathic forms, the aspect of the diphtheritic throat was to me a new experience.

In speaking of the mode in which an attack of diphtheria commences, instead of drawing upon the stereotyped descriptions to be found in the works of Bretonneau and other French writers from whom most of our acquaintance with the disease has until recently been drawn, I shall take as the foundation of my remarks.