Tonsillectomy is widely recommended for the prevention and the treatment of rheumatic infection. Kaiser,1 whose statistical studies have helped to check the indiscriminate performance of tonsillectomy for unrelated conditions, expressed the belief that the effect on rheumatic infection warrants the routine removal of tonsils in all rheumatic children. Although he modified his earlier view as to the value of this procedure in preventing recurrences,2 his investigations in Rochester, N. Y., led him to state that rheumatic infection not only occurs slightly more often among children with tonsils present but that there is a marked reduction in the mortality rate for children whose tonsils have been removed before the initial attack or subsequent to it.3
Not all clinical observers have been impressed with the value of tonsillectomy. Wilson, Lingg and Croxford,4 after a review of preceding studies and an analysis of their own series of 413 cases