General textbooks of medicine as well as current medical literature contain rather meager reference to the malignant form of diphtheria which involves the trachea and the bronchi. Osler's "System of Medicine" refers to the condition as being "extremely rare," and this seems to be the prevailing opinion. That tracheobronchial diphtheria, however, is not an uncommon occurrence is evidenced by the fact that during a period of eighteen months, twenty-four patients with this disease were admitted to the Municipal Contagious Disease Hospital, and that deaths due to tracheobronchial diphtheria formed 11 per cent of all deaths from diphtheria in this hospital during the same period. As this type of diphtheria has received scant attention in pediatric medical literature and as its early recognition and treatment are so important, these twenty-four cases are reported.
Lynah1 described two types of cases: one in which the membrane formed in the smaller bronchi and