ABSTRACT
Once known as the “strangling angel of children,” diphtheria is a preventable, acute, toxinmediated disease caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae (Table 1). In the fifth century BCE, Hippocrates described a disease characterized by sore throat, membrane formation, and death through suffocation. In 1826, the French physician Bretonneau named the condition “diphtherite,” from the Greek word for leather, because the characteristic membrane resembled leather (1). The bacterium was identified by Klebs in 1884 and first cultivated by Loeffler one year later. Subsequently, Roux and Yersin purified the toxin in 1889, and an antitoxin was invented shortly thereafter, with development of the toxoid in the 1920s (2).
