ACUTE AND CHRONIC BACILLARY DYSENTERY

To the Editor:— Drs. Felsen and Wolarsky are to be congratulated for emphasizing the importance of bacillary dysentery. I should like to discuss three phases of their paper, acute bacillary dysentery, chronic bacillary dysentery, and their relationship to ulcerative colitis. The figures shown with respect to the increasing incidence of acute bacillary dysentery seem to be quite conclusive, but they do not conform to my recollections. One is on very dangerous grounds indeed to pit recollections against statistics, but many will recall that, in the earlier decades of this century, there were severe epidemics of bacillary dysentery in some areas and in other areas it was endemic. Certainly the infant death rate from bacillary dysentery in the first quarter of the century was high. It is exceedingly difficult for me to believe that the same condition obtains today or that the actual incidence of acute bacillary dysentery is as high