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Southland Times, Issue 1538, 16 February 1872, Page 2

! There was no portion of the intelligence received by the last mail that gave more general satisfaction than the announcement that the Prince of Wales was convalescent. The confusion that had occurred in the publication of the telegrams received by the Suez mail, had created a feeling of doubt in the public mind, and there was an unmistakeable tendency to fear the worst result. As soon therefore as it became known that the San Francisco mail had arrived, the first question asked was, " Is the Prince of Wales alive ?" When a reply in the affirmative was made, it elicited a hearty expression of thanks that seemed to indicate the existence of an impression that a calamity had been averted. The similarity of the disease which prostrated the Prince of Wales to that which carried off his lamented father, the late Prince Consort, has been much commented on. Many speculations have been indulged in a Bto how or where the malady was generated, but as in the case of Prince Albert, it is to be feared that it will be very difficult to arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem. A recent writer on this subject says : — " Few disputed points in medical science ' have caused such contention as the origin of typhoid fever. One section of the medical profession, the ultra-sanitarians, hold that it is caused by the effluvia from sewers, &c, and call it pytkoge?iic, i.e., fever bred by filth ; the other and more reasonable section maintain that it is caused by a specific poison like that of small-pox, or scarlatina, and that however deleterious sewer air may be, it cannot originate the poison, and that every outbreak in a town is caused by contagion from an imported case, or perhaps by the rekindling of some dormant germ. The germa of the disease, it has been satisfactorily proved, are nearly invariably transmitted through the medium of sewage, and not by mere contact; with infected persons or clothing. In the case of scarlatina, for instance, the infection may arise in a hundred different ways. There is not the slightest security that a new coat from the tailor's has not issued that day from a garret of a journeyman, some of whose family have the disease. Danger may even lurk in the weekly basket of linen from the laundry. But in the case of typhoid fever, only two ways of infection are under ordinary circumstances possible, drinking water, or inhaling air, either of wbich hive been actually contaminated by sewage containing the specific poison. Typhus fever has a different mode of propagation, also the result of a specific poison. It infects persons breathing the same air as the patient, and is therefore far more catching than typhoid fever ; nevertheless the risk of infection is small compared to j that of scarlatina, or of small pox ; and attendants on the sick run little risk in well ventilated rooms. We may therefore lay down as the general opinion of the medical profession that whilst typhus is a ' catching disease,' though practically only so in the dwellings of the lower classes, typhoid is only to be caught from the excretions of typhoid fever cases, not from the patients themselves."