CONTROLLED studies reported by Miller and Faber,1 Kendrick and Eldering,2 Sauer,3 Singer-Brooks4 and others5 offer clinical evidence of the effectiveness of pertussis vaccine.
Bradford, Scherp and Brooks6 showed that refined antipertussis serum, when injected into susceptible contacts, significantly diminished the clinical attack of whooping cough.
It was only natural that, if active immunity was to be established, passive immunity should be tried; for this reason a number of animal antitoxins were introduced for clinical treatment.
Mortality rates could not be used as criteria, since these rates had fallen in the past fifteen years, simply by good nursing care without any specific therapy, to 1.5 per cent, in the Department of Contagious Diseases, City Hospital, Cleveland.
One patient ill with this disease cannot be compared with another. Each must be his own control and must be observed before and after treatment. There are several factors