The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-11-23 00:00:00

DEATH OF A GRANDDAUGHTER OF
QUEEN VICTORIA.

DARMSTADT, Nov. H.
Princess Mary, the youngest daughter of the Grand
Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt (grand-daughter of Queen
Victoria), died to-day of diphtheria.
DAR3ISTADT, Nov. 17.
The following oT.cial bulletin was issued at nine
o'clock this morning :—" The Grand Duke continues
free from fever. The diphtheric membrane has only
been partially removed, but his Highness's condition
is, nevertheless, decidedly improving. A marked
change for the better has manifested itself in the con-
dition of the Hereditary Grand Duke."

In noticing the melancholy event of the death of the young
Princess, The Times, in a leader, remarks :

The simultaneous occurrence of severe or fatal ill-
ness in many members of a single household is an
event which never fails to call forth lively sympathy
with the sufferers and with those to whom they are
most dear; and the severity of such a calamity, sadly
familiar as it has been rendered by successive epidemics
of diphtheria, is brought home to all of us with peculiar
force when it falls upon a family not only of exalted
station but in which that station has been con-
spiuously adorned by public and private virtues. The
British people would in any case be deeply moved by
the domestic sorrows of any of the Queen's descendants;
but the Princess Alice, by her untiring efforts to
promote the welfare of others, alike in the country
of her birth and in that of her adoption, has in an
especial manner gained the sympathies of all. The
melancholy intelligence that her husband, her son, and
four of her five daughters have been prostrated by diph-
theria, and that her youngest daughter, the Princess
Mary, at the tender age of four years, has fallen a
victim to the malady, will be received everywhere with
the most profound regret; and the bulletins of each
day will be awaited with anxiety, as well in England
as in Germany. The latest reports which have reached
us justify the hope that the worst may now be over,
and that the Princess may be spared the ordeal of still
further and deeper affliction.
The disease by which the sufferers have been
attacked is one of which the nature, the causes, and
the methods of diffusion are still to a great extent
shrouded in obscurity. Diphtheria was scarcely
recognized by physicians until it appeared, rather
more than twenty years ago, at Boulogne, where a
considerable mortality was oecasioned by what was
at first described as the 'Boulogne sore-throat."
The disease soon visited England in an unmis-
takable form ; but eubsequent inquiries dis-
covered that this was not in reality its first out-
break amongst us, and that it had previously ex-
isted, without exciting attention, in certain
villages in Norfolk. In the course of the next few
years it prevailed in manY places, and the resem-
blance between its symptoms and those of croup
early led to the suggestion that the two maladies
were nearly allied to each otner, and that diphtheria
might, indeed, be only a variety of croup to which
some unknown conditions had imparted a character of
contagiousness which the origfnal form of the disease
had not possessed. The question whether croup and
diphtheria are essentially identical is one which has
been very carefully studied, and which even now is
not certainly determined ; although there can be no
doubt of the existence of a growing tendency among
physicians in favour of a reply in the affirmative.
NVllen diphtheria first attracted notice, it appeared
to be diffused by contagion alone; and the facts
afforded no support to a belief that its occurrence
was even promoted by what are comprehensively
called "insanitary conditions of living," such as
exposure to sewer emanations and other noxious in-
fluences. Of late years, however, there has been a
manifest inclination among non-medical sanitarians
and the public to connect epidemics of diphtheria with
the general sanitary defects of the districts in wbich
they have occurred. All that can be said to be
certainly known upon this part of the subject is that
the high contagiousness of diphtheria is controlled by
an apparent absence of susceptibility on the part of
large numbers of people, more especially of adults,
whence it happens that more than half the cases occur in
children between the ages of 2 and 12 years; and
that it has never been distinctly traced to any specific
contamination of air or water, or known to coincide
precisely with the area of any infected sewer or water-
course;er differing y, therefore, from typhoid
f
respects.
There are some animal
evin both the
these
tot al
poisons which are known to increase in the severity of
their action by successive inoculations ; and to this
class it seems probable that the infectious matter of
diphtheria may belong. Dr. Thorne-Thorne, by whom
outbreaks in some of the Welsh valleys have been in-
vestigated, has recorded that the epidemic prevalence
of diphtheria was preceded by an epidemic sore-throat
of a less formidable kind, and suggests the probability
that the latter may have been a development ef the
earlier affection. Diphtheria certainly differs from
many other epidemic diseases is not conferring any
positive immunity from subsequent attacks; and if at
any period or stage it is a purely local disorder, it soon
ceases to retain this character. The primary source of
danger is from suffocation by the formation of mem-
branes in the air-pasaages ; but long after this danger
Is past a fatal issue may be determined by the produc-
tion of irremediable changes in vital organs, Exhaus-
tion of the powers of life is a common cause of mor-
tality; and those who survive often suffer grievously
from muscular paralysis, . .

The Evening Standard remarks :—" The news of the
very eerious illness of the Grand Duke of Hesse and
his family, and of the death of one of the children,
will be received with general sorrow and commisera-
tion. The Princess Alice was, when she resided
among us, one of thE! most popular members of the
Royal family; and since her marriage she has gained
the love of her husbnd's subjects by the unaffected
kindness of her disposition, and by the interest which
she takes in their welfare. That the whole of the
Royal family of Hesse should have been attacked by
diphtheria would seem to argue that there must have
existed some radical defect in drainage or some
general insanitary condition of the palace. Diphtheria