DR TYNDALL ON THE ORIGIN OF TYPHOID FEVER.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 235, 11 March 1875, Page 3

DR TYNDALL ON THE ORIGIN OF TYPHOID FEVER.

Professor Tyndall takes advantage of awakened public attention to the ravages produced by epidemic diseases to state his views on the origin of typhoid fever. The importance of the subject he remarks, is shown by the fact that this pest sends 16,000 of the inhabitants of these islands yearly to the grave, and causes 150,000t0 passthrough its protracted miseries. The medical controversy turns on the question : Can typhoid fever be generated anew? Is it produced by the decomposition and putrefaction of animal and vegetable substances, or must the matter producing it have had previous contact with an infected body? In adopting the latter view, Professor Tyndall declares that he has been won over by “the clear and powerful writings of William Budd, joined to those of the celebrated Pasteur.” It was, in fact, Dr Budd’s treatise on “ Typhoid Fever ” which excited the Professor’s interest in the subject, and it is from its pages that he obtains the evidence in support of his conclusions. In a matter of this kind it is especially true that an ounce of experience is worth a ton of theory, and Dr Budd’s desscription of an outbreak of typhoid fever in his native village of North Tawton, and of its subsequent spread, is regarded by Professor Tyndall as of “ the most conclusive character,” while the logic which bends the facts together is, as far he can see, “ simply irresistible.” North Tawton, like so many other villages, had no system of sewers, and any amount of uncovered filth at or near the doors of its inhabitants. For fifteen years there was no severe outbreak of the fever, and for ten years only a single case; Then came the epidemic. On the 11th of July—it was not this year, but as far back as 1839 —a case of typhoid fever, “coubtless imported from without,” occurred in a poor and crowded dwelling, and before the end of November, “ eighty of the inhabitants had suffered from it—-a proportion about the same as that now suffering at Over Darwen.” The spread of the disease is then carefully traced. Two sawyers living near the stricken house at North Tawton fell ill, and quitted the village for their homes at Morchard, which was previously free from typhoid fever. In two days one of these men took to his bed, and at the end of five weeks he died. Ten days after two of his children were laid up with the fever, as was the other sawyer, who transmitted the disease' to a friend who came from a considerable distance to see him. We really cannot follow the progress of the fever into a number of other places mentioned, and it must suffice to say that in every instance its personal transmission was shown to have taken place. At the same time, and to establish the contrast, it is stated that scattered over fthe countryside were some “twenty or thirty other hamlets, in each of which were the usual manure yard, the inevitable pigsty, and the (same primitive accommodation for human needs.” And yet in no one of these small villages was there a single case

of fever. Another large fact of equal suggestiveness is given. In November, 1863, a girl laboring under typhoid fever was admitted into the reformatory known as the Convent of the Good Shepherd, at Arno’s Court, near Bristol. She was removed there by permission ol a medical man, who, in accordance with the prevalent docvriue, held that typhoid fever “ was the result of bad drainage, and in no way contagious.” In the course, however, of a few weeks, fiftysix of the inmates took the fever, of whom eight died. The medical authorities were now on the alert, and so scrupulously was the work of disinfection carried out, that the plague was instantly stayed, and only three cases of infection having occurred subsequent to the adoption of these measures, “ Can it be doubted,” Professor Tyndall asks, “ that with sound medical advisers, backed by an intelligent copulation, an equally rapid destruction of the foe might be accomplished at Over Darwen ? ” The question, indeed, might be raised in reference to many other local bodies, both urban and suburban, of whose preparations in anticipation of the enemy’s visitation little or nothing is known, because little or nothing is being done. —Manchetter Examiner.