IMPORTANCE OF THE CAT IN THE TRANSMISSION OF DIPHTHERIA

The relation which cats bear to the transmission of diphtheria has been questioned for many years. Reports by Low,¹ Jewett,² Barras,³ Porter,⁴ Simmons,⁵ Gwynn,⁶ Osborne,⁷ Symes,⁸ Turner⁹ and Priestley,¹⁰ as well as several editorials¹¹ in medical journals, lend support to the belief that cats are capable of spreading the disease.

Investigations by Simmons,⁵ Klein,¹² Renshaw,¹³ Welch and Abbott,¹⁴ Remlinger¹⁵ and Karlinski¹⁶ (quoted by Wharton¹⁷) tend to indicate that cats can contract and spread diphtheria. The most recent work, however, that reported by Savage¹⁸ in 1920, contradicts these early experiments.

EXPERIMENTS  Schick Test.—The Schick test was done on thirty-nine kittens and thirty-one cats, twice the concentration of the adult Schick dosage being used. The results in all the animals were negative after twenty-four, forty-eight and ninety-six hours.Susceptibility of Cats to