Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

:—:1859.] Diphtheria. 761by its own sphincter or by a coagulum of blood; the uterineveins being large and patulous, and the forcible contraction ofthe organ—these furnish, in his opinion, the mechanism capableof accomplishing the fatal accident. (See Brad/iwaites Retrospect,xix., page 262.) In the pre.- no such conditionsare furnished, and throwing aside the hypothesisingress, we are compelled to fall back upon the presumptionthat the abortionist forcibly inflated the entire venous system,by means of the catheter introduced into the uterus, perforatingits parietes, and in contact with the lacerated vessels of thatorgan. And this presumption is stregthened by the fact thatthe opinion prevailed, at the time of the coroner's inquest, thatabortion might be produced by inflating the space between themembranes and the womb.The fact of forcible inflation is incapable of proof, there beingno third person present at the time of death, and hence no witness.Absolute certainty can only be arrived at from the confessionof the guilt} [Cm. 7Lancet and Obser.woman herself.Diphtheria.Dr. David Wooster thus sums upan able article on Diphtheria,which has appeared in the Pacific Medical and /Surgical'JournalI. Diphtheria is a specific disease.II. It is distinguished from scarlatina by the absence of eruption;from gangrenous sore throat, by the absence of ulcerationand sloughing; from croup, by the aplastic nature of the exudation.III. Diphtheria may properly be divided into two varietiesthe mild and the severe.IV. The mild is seldom fatal : slight, or no difficulty of deglution,little fever, no engorgement of cervical glands, neithercoryza nor lachrymation, but presenting the positive diagnosticsign of aplastic exudation on the tonsil, palate, or pharynx.V. The severe is recognised by the diagnostic aplastic falsemembrane, high fever at first, coryza, lachrymation, engorgedglands about the jaw. difficult deglutition, difficult utterance, orcomplete aphonia, great diminution of animal power, cyanosis,vomiting towards the close of the affection, and intense gangrenousfee tor from the decomposition of the exudation.VL Diphtheria is contagious.** The experience of the French epidemics has made abundantly clear one vervimportant fact in the history of Diphtheria, which has not yet been so clearlyeliminated from the observed facts, of the English epidemic. It may be veryclearly shown by the evidenee collected, that contagion plays the principal part