The cerebral complications of whooping cough have been attributed to many causes, among which toxemia, hemorrhage, encephalitis, meningitis and tetany are most frequently cited. Reports of pathologic examinations supporting diagnoses of toxemia or hemorrhage or meningitis have been made, but descriptions of an accompanying encephalitis are rare, although much clinical evidence exists to suggest that this condition is present in certain patients. A review of the American literature reveals no pathologic report of this type of encephalitis.
Hada,1 in writing of the meningeal complications of whooping cough in 1913, described "acute encephalitic changes in parts of the brain adjacent to a profuse exudate in the sulci." Attention was called in this paper to the similarity of pertussis encephalitis and encephalitis complicating influenza. The same author emphasized the fact that until 1913 no case had been reported in the literature of an isolated cerebral hemorrhage in whooping cough, which was