Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
05 Oct 2021 11:35 #394112
by ketchim
It was highly contagious, lethal and mysterious
Then medical experts developed treatments
and vaccines, and the affliction disappeared
—but not entirely
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
05 Oct 2021 11:36 #394113
by ketchim
Even Noah Webster, that master of words, did not have a name for the terrible sickness. “In May 1735,” he wrote in A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, “in a wet cold season, appeared at Kingston, an inland town in New-Hampshire, situated in a low plain, a disease among children, commonly called the ‘throat distemper,’ of a most malignant kind, and by far the most fatal ever known in this country.”
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
05 Oct 2021 11:39 - 05 Oct 2021 11:42 #394114
by ketchim
In 1821, a French physician, Pierre Bretonneau, gave the disease a name: diphtérite. He based it on the Greek word diphthera, for leather
—a reference to the affliction’s signature physical feature, a thick,
leathery buildup of dead tissue in a patient’s throat,
which makes breathing and swallowing difficult, or impossible.
And children, with their relatively small airways, were particularly vulnerable.
Last edit: 05 Oct 2021 11:42 by
ketchim.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
05 Oct 2021 18:02 - 05 Oct 2021 18:04 #394139
by ketchim
“The greatest care and thoughtfulness should be exercised
in these cases of simple sore throat, as in the severer cases; and it should be constantly borne in mind that the kissing of children
at such times is most dangerous.”
Last edit: 05 Oct 2021 18:04 by
ketchim.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Less
More
-
Posts: 98017
-
Thank you received: 45
-
-
-
Forum
-
Political Opinions, Commentaries on Current Issues
-
THE CONVERSATION TREE
-
How Science Conquered Diphtheria : VACCINE !
Time to create page: 0.205 seconds