[A historical survey of diphtheria in the Western World, China and Japan. Part II: Modern age (from sixteenth century to the beginning of nineteenth century)].

In Europe and North America, literatures on diphtheritic diseases was increasing from sixteenth to eighteenth century. In New England of North America, diphtheria and scarlet fever occurred epidemically in mingled form from 1735 to the succeeding year. Thereafter, many physicians in Europe and America treated patients of diphtheria and had different opinions about the nature of croup and diphtheria. In China, its own clinical medicine progressed extraordinarily during the modern age. Laryngeal specialists appeared and wrote special monographs about the pharynx and larynx. A physician wrote about "epidemic exanthem", which the author presumes to be a complicated form of scarlet fever and diphtheria. In Japan, diphtheria occurred in sporadic form usually, and in epidemic form occasionally. Japanese physicians studied medicine from China since the ancient age, and also introduced European medicine through the Netherlands in the eighteenth century. So Japanese physicians learned knowledge about throat diseases and diphtheria from Chinese and European medicine.