CAUSE OF THE SPREAD OF TYPHUS.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3169, 16 April 1879, Page 1

CAUSE OF THE SPREAD OF TYPHUS.

I We extract the following paragraph from a paper on •'Eecent Science," published in the January number of The Nineteenth Century'•:—-" '"

\ "An argument for the doctrine of contagium vivutn is afforded.by the instructive history of an epidemic of typhus which took place last year in the barracks at Tubingen. The barracks are constructed to hold two companies in each wing, and it was observed that the forty-eight men who fell ill belonged, without exception, to the two, companies—the 9th and 10th— inhabiting the eastern wing of the building, to which part the disease was exclusively confined. There seemed to be no possibility of infection from without, and such causes as improper food, bad air, exhaustion, or cold, would have affected all the soldiers equally. Attention was, therefore, directed to the water supply, and it was found that there were four springs for the whole- building, one of which was used exclusively by the 9th and by the eastern half of the 10th com^ pany. Of the twenty ifive- cases of illness in the latter company, no less than twenty-one belonged to its eastern half, >o that .forty-five oat of the whole forty. eight cases were of men who had used the. .water of this particular spring.. A further enquiry -showed' that in the immediate neighborhood of this spring was a pit full bf vegetable 'ddbris, known to have formerly been a stagnant pool; the shaft dug for the spring in question was found, by samples of earth taken from it, to be very rich in organic constituents, and" the water of the spring itself was remarkably rich in living.organisms." ;