A System of Practical Medicine by American Authors

French 19th century contributions to the development of treatments for diphtheria

“…21 -23 The results obtained in Paris were reflected not only in Berlin, but elsewhere. For example, an American textbook 24 published soon after the French and German results had been reported concluded that the value of anti-toxin serum had been established, but, 'so that readers may themselves to a certain extent have a basis for forming their own opinions', statistics were presented showing trends in fatality among patients admitted to the Willard Parker Hospital for Contagious Diseases in New York, and the Kaiser-und-Kaiserin Friedrich Augusta Hospital in Berlin. 25 Statistics were frequently used to assess the efficacy of anti-streptococcal and anti-diphtheritic serotherapy in Paris.…”

Park's story and Winters' tale: alternate allocation clinical trials in turn of the century America

“…Yet the actual sequence of Park's reporting of the study throws light on the perceived value and acceptance of such alternation of patients in America at the time it was purportedly conducted. Despite contributing frequent reports to the Medical Record and Medical News during the latter half of the 1890s, Park never reported the study in those journals; nor did he report the study in his reviews of the treatment of diphtheria in Alfred L Loomis' and William Gilman Thompson's System of Practical Medicine 16 or Hobart Hare's System of Practical Therapeutics , 17 despite his inclusion of ‘statistics’ for the year 1896 in the latter report. Indeed, it seems that the most influential clinical investigation in favour of antitoxin in America during the latter half of the 1890s was the 1896 collective investigation by the American Pediatric Society concerning the use of antitoxin in private practice, gathering and collating mortality data from case series provided by 613 different physicians.…”