p. 13 | Cats Carried the Diphtheria

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 29, 1916

Cats Carried the Diphtheria

The relationship between the diseases of men and of animals has been as much neglected in this country as it has been studied in the tropics. For this reason we are profoundly ignorant of the rôle which animals play—if they play any rôle at all—in the dissemination of epidemics.

Special interest attaches, therefore, to a communication to the National Medical Journal, which describes how an outbreak of diphtheria in an orphanage was traced back to some cats in the building. Sixty-nine cases of diphtheria out of a total of seventy-one came, it was found, from the boys’ house. After many investigations and precautions such factors in the production of the disease as sanitary defects, contaminated water supply, and food, were eliminated. Realizing that there must be a carrier of the bacillus, the physician in charge decided to turn his attention to the cats, and took swabs from all their throats. On bacteriological examination it was found that the four cats from the boys’ side of the orphanage were suffering from diphtheria; the four cats from the girls’ side although showing other microorganisms in profusion, did not prove to have the true diphtheria bacillus. The cats were destroyed, and after that only ten more cases of diphtheria occurred. They occurred within a few days, showing that they had already become infected when the cats were destroyed. There have been no cases since. This tends to show that cats are, or can be, carriers of diphtheria.—Washington Post.