Abstract
Bacteria of the Throat and Nose AN account of the micro-organisms, the normal bacterial flora, found in the nose and throat of persons living in London and south-east England, some of whom were repeatedly examined over a period of seven years, is given in a report by Drs. Edith Straker, Bradford Hill and R. Lovell, published by the Ministry of Health (Reps, on Pub. Health and Med. Subjects, No. 90. H.M. Stationery Office. 2s. net). The inquiry, which lasted from 1930 until 1937, included repeated swabbings of volunteers from among the staff of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and of boarders in a boys’ public school. Swabbings were also occasionally taken from inmates of the Royal Hospital School, Greenwich, of an orphan home, and from members of the clerical staff of the Ministry. The work shows that of any large group of adults living in an urban community between 20 and 40 per cent will usually at any one time be carrying a pneumococcus in the nasopharynx, between 5 and 15 per cent a hæmolytic streptococcus, between 40 and 80 per cent the so-called influenza bacillus, and between 5 and 20 per cent the meningococcus of cerebro-spinal fever. The pneumococcus and the meningococcus were less frequent in women than in men. The pneumococcus was found more frequently in cold damp weather than during hot dry periods, while the reverse association tends to occur with the hæmolytic streptococcus. The last-named organism shows a sharp rise in prevalence in boys’ boarding schools in association with outbreaks of tonsillitis. Neither the pneumococcus nor the influenza bacillus shows any close association with the fluctuations in mortality attributed to influenza. Observations made on persons suffering from colds tell strongly against the view that the acute infectious cold is caused by any of the bacteria studied. Dr. Rosher contributes a section on the frequency of the influenza bacillus in the trachea of unselected cases without respiratory disease coming to post-mortem examination; this organism was found in 27 per cent of such cases.
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Research Items. Nature 144, 1017–1018 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1441017a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1441017a0