DIPHTHERIA AND CATS

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 21, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 49.

DIPHTHERIA AND CATS.

If mankind descend from the proper dignity of their nature to a fondling intimacy with beasts, they are sure to find, sooner or later, some penalty that is inseparable from every sort of what the Mosaic law denounces as "confusion." The following (says the London Sanitary Record) is an illustration of the possible connection between diphtheria in children and in cats: A little boy was taken ill with what turned out ultimately to be fatal diphtheria. On the first day of his illness he was sick (modern insular for nausea), and the cat, which was in the room at the time, licked the vomit on the floor. In a few days (the child meanwhile having died) the animal was noticed to be ill, and her sufferings being so severe, and so similar to those of the dead boy, the owner destroyed her. During the early part of its illness the cat had been let out at night in the back yard, as usual. A few days later the cat of a neighbor, who lived a few doors further off, was noticed to be ill. It had also been out in the back yard at night. The second animal, which, however, recovered, was the pet and playfellow of four little girls, who, grieved at the illness of their favorite, nursed it with great care. All four girls developed diphtheria, their mother being convinced that they got it from the cat; and, indeed, no other known source of contact with infection could be discovered. It is easy to imagine cats catching an infectious disease like diphtheria when we remember how often milk and other unused food from the sick-room is given to the cat, or by some people thrown out into the back yard for the benefit of their neighbors' cats if they have none of their own.—Sanitary Era.