The following tables are taken from a paper by Dr. J. Richardson Armstrong in a recent Lancet, describing his experience with diphtheria antitoxine in private practice in treating one hundred and twenty-two cases of diphtheria:
------------------------+------+----------+-------- | |Recovered.| Died. ------------------------+------+----------+-------- 1. | | | Total number of cases | | | treated from June | | | 21 to Dec. 17, 1897 | 42 | 36 | 6 Severe cases; antitoxine| | | injected | 22 | 20 | 2 Mild cases; antitoxine | | | not injected | 20 | 16 | 4 +======+==========+======== 2. | | | Total number of cases | | | treated, January 1 | | | to December 31, | | | 1898 | 80 | 77 | 3 Severe cases, injected | 55 | 54 | 1 Mild cases, non-injected| 25 | 23 | 2 ------------------------+------+----------+--------
In answer to the question, Should every case of diphtheria be treated with antitoxine, Dr. Armstrong says: "Some of the cases are sufficiently mild not to need it, so I will not go so far as to say that it is absolutely essential to inject in every case, although I would call it an excellent practice to do so, and the patients would make much more rapid recoveries. I think that injection ought to be insisted upon as early as possible in every case that is at all severe or likely to prove so, and I think that the medical man who does not employ antitoxine and who loses a large proportion of his cases is incurring a responsibility which is almost criminal. The earlier a patient is injected the greater is the chance of recovery, and the more rapid is the recovery."
Among the leading principles of forestry, as defined by the chief fire warden of Minnesota, are that the best agricultural land should not be devoted to forest while wood and timber can be profitably grown on soil that is unfit for farming purposes; that the management should be continuous, and no more timber should be taken out of the forest in one year, or in a series of ten or twenty years, than grows in the entire forest in the same period; that the cutting of timber should be in blocks or strips, so as to facilitate reproduction on the clear areas by seeds falling from the trees left standing; and that the forest, when young, must have in numbers vastly more trees than when it is mature. To make good timber, the forest, when young, must be crowded so as to secure height growth. Mixed wood, managed on forestry principles in the Black Forest of Germany, has per acre, at the age of twenty years, 3,960 trees; at the age of one hundred years, 262 trees.