TYPHOID FEVER.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 189, 16 January 1875, Page 3

TYPHOID FEVER.

, The following from the Spectator-will prove interesting to Christchurch readers : Professor Tyndall sent to Monday’s Times a striking letter to prove that typhoid fever is simply infectious, —the infection being propagated by some organism carried into, and multiplied in, the intestinal canal of the patient,—and that this character of the disease is not recognised in London and welldrained cities, only because the sewers really carry off the poison to some other part of the town, diffusing it by the agency of “sewergas,” or water infused with sewer-gas. In country districts, says Professor Tyndall, where there is no efficient sewerage, it can be proved that the poison spreads only on the lines of direction taken by persons who have been in contact with infected patients; and he illustrates this in at least one case, which is conclusive as far as that case goes, in establishing that the fe\ T er was carried about by persons who had been in direct contact with the disease, —the case of an outbreak in North Tawton. He shows that in many even Averse-drained hamlets near, Avhere all the other conditions were the same, but where no personal communication with the disease had been established, the fever never appeared during long series of years; but Avherever a patient suffering from the disease went, there Avas an outbreak. Professor Tyndall’s case is incomplete, however, in not showing that in this respect all outbreaks of typhoid follow the same hw; Avhereas so little is really knoAvn of the disease, that it is quite possible that typhoid symptoms may be in one case due to the rapidly self-propagating fungus, and in another to materially different causes. For instance, the Medical Journal of this Aveek shows that during nine years 3555 cases of typhoid Avere treated in the London Fever Hospital, in the same wards Avith 5144 other patients, and that though no precautions Avere taken to prevent the infection, not a single case of contagion occurred. It not as likely to be a standard case as Pro fessor Tyndall’s?