The cases of 100 consecutive patients with epidemic meningitis admitted at the Louisville General Hospital during the epidemic of 1943 are analyzed and discussed in this paper in order to throw some light on the problem of reduction of the death rate in future epidemics.
All patients with clinical signs and symptoms of meningitis were admitted to the isolation department of the hospital and a lumbar puncture was done immediately to confirm the diagnosis.
Of the 100 patients, 55 were men or boys and 45 were women or girls; 64 were white persons and 36 were Negroes. If one considers that the white population of Louisville is about six times as large as the Negro population, one can readily see that the number of Negro patients is relatively higher. This fact throws a significant light on the public health aspect of the problem and on the epidemiology of the disease.