Bacterial Meningitis

Abstract

Fifty to 70 years ago, in the era before the introduction of the sulfonamides and antibiotic agents, relatively meager attention was given to the neurologic complications and sequelae of bacterial meningitis. The mortality from this disease was so dreadfully high that it diverted attention from the neurologic complications among the few survivors. The case-fatality rate for pneumococcal meningitis, even in the years after the introduction of specific types of antiserum for clinical use, was between 95 and 100 per cent.¹ Similarly, death occurred in 92 per cent of patients with Hemophilus influenzae meningitis.² Only in "epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis" (meningococcal meningitis) . . .