55164 Myra Wilson, Bristol Labombard. Bristol.. W. C. Bingham, Bristol.. (2 specimens) G W. Farr. Bristol.. D Bosworth, Bristol.. F. H. Palmer, Bristol N. H. Peninton, Bristol (2 specimens) I G. Shepard, Bristol.. (2 specimens) John S. Burt, Bristol. 55148 Internal organs of Sheep.. 53571 Blood Pudding 53508 Beef. 53833 Pork (2 Specimens) 54098 Turkey 54249 Beef Liver. 54151 Pork Total, 39. Geo. Burritt, Bristol. A. W. McShane. Bristol Dr. H. L Williamson, Bristol.. E. H. Scott, Johnson... " 66 64 Lesions resembling milary tu- Frank Miller, Burlington...... No tubercle bacilli found BULLETIN OF THE VERMONT STATE BOARD OF HEALTH. Volume VIII. No. 3. Issued Quarterly at Brattleboro, Vermont. The Bulletin is published quarterly by the State Board of Health under the authority of Section 5 of Act No. 90, Legislature of 1900. It will be sent to all Boards of Health. A copy will be sent to any person in the state upon request addressed to the Secretary, Henry D. Holton, Brattleboro. NEWS ITEMS. Thirty-one town clerks have failed to comply with the law in making returns of vital statistics. Their attention is called to No. 190, Acts of 1906. A town in New York State is demanding damages from a family that suffered a child having whooping cough to be on the streets on the Fourth of July. A paper published in Harrisburg, Pa., has the following item: "The startling mortality among children from the little-regarded ailment of measles was indicated at Harrisburg, Penn., Jan. 18, by a statement issued by the State Department of Health, showing that in 1906 there were 1,463 deaths from it, 1,240 being of children under 5 years of age. "In December alone 2,307 cases of the disease were reported and a search of the records shows that it kills 21⁄2 times more children than does scarlet fever." "Every case of what is called 'children's diseases,' is required to be reported, under penalty, and if people were as much afraid of measles, whooping cough, mumps, chicken-pox, etc., as they are of smallpox and the more virulent ills and took the same precautions, these diseases would cease to exist." INTERPRETATION OF BACTERIOLOGICAL EXAMINATIONS. We desire to impress upon the mind of every physician in the state that a bacteriological examination made at the State Laboratory of Hygiene is solely to assist the physician in arriving at a correct diagnosis, and that the report which the laboratory makes, whether "positive" or "negative," is upon the material sent. As an illustration: A swab from a suspected case of diphtheria may be reported "negative," solely because no live diphtheria germs were entrapped when the swab was used; yet the disease may have been diphtheria. The report is made upon the swab, and not upon the patient. The same application of principle holds in the examination of suspected tuberculosis. If a culture taken from the throat of a patient, who appears, clinically, to have diphtheria, reveals the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, there can be no question as to the diagnosis; but should the culture prove negative, instead of positive, the physician should in every instance regard the result as valueless, and should not permit it to warp his judgment or treatment of the case from a clinical point of view. The physician who relies upon a primary negative result for a diagnosis of his case may find hmself in serious trouble, with, perhaps, a most malignant type of diphtheria on his hands a few days later. The Laboratory does not in any instance give a diagnosis of the case; does not see the patient; knows nothing of his symptoms. It simply reports "positive" or "negative" as the result of a most careful and scientific examination of the material received. It remains for the physician to make the diagnosis after assembling all the facts presented and obtainable. Park, who may be regarded as an eminent authority, says: Diphtheria does not occur without the presence of the dipthheria bacilli; but there have been many cases of diphtheria in which, for one or another reason, no bacilli were found in the cultures by the examiner. In many of these cases later cultures revealed them. In a convalscent case the absence of bacilli in any one culture indicates that there are certainly not many bacilli left in the throat. Only repeated cultures can prove their total absence. These remarks are made because in laboratory work there is occasionally a physician who relies upon a single negative result, and the same is true of health officers in determining when a patient may be released from quarantine. In neither case is a single negative result conclusive. The attention of physicians and health officers is called to the above from the bulletin of the New Hampshire State Board of Health. Do not ever release a case of diphtheria from quarantine until you have two negative cultures taken two days apart. |