EARLY DIAGNOSIS AND INTRAVENOUS SERUM TREATMENT OF EPIDEMIC CEREBROSPINAL MENINGITIS

Abstract

In large cantonment hospitals where clinical material can be controlled by military methods, where acute disease in large volume may be studied in its earliest as well as its later stages, where necropsy study is possible and where elaborate laboratory equipment is often lacking and the medical officer thrown in consequence on his own resources, bedside observation may well add to the store of medical knowledge. At the base hospital, Camp Jackson, S. C., attention has been focused on epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis. More than 270 cases of this disease have been studied with the result that a more definite idea of its general character has been established, methods of diagnosis of value have been brought into use, and a more successful treatment has been carried out. This paper is based on the study of the first 265 cases of meningococcus infection observed from November, 1917, to June, 1918. Some of