is involved in the rule that people with broken hips usually die
within ten days or get well.

&bout a generation ago, wo began putting pneumonias into types and at
that time recognized types I., II., III., and put all others into type
IV. Now, more than thirty types are recognized and for nearly all 6f
them is developed a specific serum which is definitely curative. The |
relatively recent development of the sulfa drugs has made it possible :
to manage a pneumonia with comparative certainty and the use of the +.
matched serum gives it precision never before attained. Probably the
ideal thing is to use both the synthetic drugs and the bioligic balancer,

The difficulty about this comes out of the fact that the sulfa drug must
be used early to get the most good from it and the specific serum can-=
not be selected from the group until the case has developed far enough
to type. Each case thus presents a problem peculiar to itself, i.e. the
patient, his friends and his physician must decide which they will give
him, a sulfa drug treatment and maybe have him practically recovered
before he could be typed and by this treatment make typing difficult or
impossible, or should they wait for time to type and so get the double
assurance of applying both treatments or antidotes.

There are various stations where the most approved material for the
‘most advanced treatment of pneumonia are kept and renewed and brought
to date as indicated. The Lawrence Memorial Hospital is one of them,
its laboratory and its laboratory technicians have been investigated
and approved by competent authority. Its supply of the assortment of
specific type serums is adequate, its drug supply is correct and there
is enough of it, and probably most important of all, its spirit is co-
operative.

If the doctor sends the pneumonia patient to the hospital, they find
there everything in readiness to do all that present day medicine knows
to do on such situations. If for any reason, the patient remains in
his home, the hospital will send a technician, armed with suitable appe
aratus to collect specimens of blood, urine, sputum, ete. for making
the necessary laboratory studies,

tI suggest that you give this whole matter careful consideration, so
that if the horrible hypothesis becomes a tragically pressing reality,
you can do what there is to do without needless delay or loss of time,

Under the new treatments described above and partly because of them
along with the development of other favorable influences the mortality
in pneumonia has improved from about 1 in 4 to about 1 in 35. Howevep,
the record for Douglas County for 1943 shows 63 cases of all forms of
pneumonia with 16 deaths. This does not mean that this county is espece
lally bad about pneumonia--rather, it means that only fatal cases were
well reported. At that we are not so bad--one solid Kansas county re-
ported for 1942 it had enough deaths from pneumonia to allow two deaths
for each reported case with a 3% excess left over.

H. L. Chambers, Director
Douglas County Health Unit