THE TYPHUS GERM

Evening Star, Issue 18022, 17 July 1922, Page 1

THE TYPHUS GERM

REPORTED DISCOVERY. WOMAN DOCTOR’S WORK IN RUSSIA. An announcement of tire first importance to the health of Europe lias been made by Dr Walter P. Davenport, of the American Relief Administration in Russia (writes the medical correspondent of ‘The Times’). Thus is the discovery of what ia believed) to be the genu of typhus fever by Dr N. Kritoh, the woman director of tho Sokolnichersky Hospital Laboratory inj Moscow.

Dr Erlich described her work before a meeting of the bacteriological section of the Moscow Medical Society on April 26. In collaboration with Dr V. Badkan, director of the Microbiological Institute, Moscow, she has been working on the etiology of typhus fever since the autumn of 1916. She has succeeded in _ isolating a , coccus which is disc or biscuit shaped, and in appearance much like tliei pneumo-coccus. The germ was found) in the brain tissue and spleen of 150 cages of typhus ono hour after death. The organism was then grown in media composed of sterilised emulsion of pancreatimsed > spleen. Inoculation of guinea pigs with it invariably produced the symptoms of typhus- fever. _ Tho work will, of course, require confirmation. Nevertheless, it ie of deep interest, because up till now the impression has been that what are known as Rickettsia bodies were the causative organism. Indeed, in the newly-publishedi report of tho' Typhus Research Commission of the League of Red Oroea Societies to Poland—a very careful account—it ia categorically stated that Ricksettia Prewazeki is the cause of typhus. Even as'things stand, however, it does not absolutely follow that the Rickettsia bodies may not represent a link in the chain of infection, another link being the new coccus. It has been said that a full history of typhus fever since the Middle Ages would he a history of Europe. It would certainly be a history of Europe’s wars and famines, those twin ..breeding-grounds of lice, by which this dreadful affliction is carried from man to man. In another sense the history of the disappearance of typhus is the history of modem sanitation. England, once a home of “gaol fever,’’ for example, has scarcely seen a case for many years. The most terrible modern -epidemic was that which occurred in Serbia and Rumania. Drs Wells and Perkins, of the American Red Cross Commission, wrote of it in the 'Journal’ of the American Medical Association (March 16, 1918): “Now arose a situation that can only be compared to tho descriptions in Defoe's ‘ Journal of tho Plague Year.’ Tho stricken population fled hither and thither to escape infection or to find food, warmth, end shelter, and so they spread the disease, until it is probable that nearly a. million were infected ia a population, including the armies, of something less than five millions. Stories aro told of horrors piled on horrors—of trains stagnating on congested tracks while in box-cars the people were packed so closely together that those who died could nob fall, and were removed only when at last the cars were emptied'; or morning searches of tho railroad stations and freight yards for the bodies of persons who had crept into corners and expired; of daily sights of people dying in tho streets of Jassy, some from disease and some- merely from starvation and exposure.” THE POSITION IN RUSSIA. Thai, tale of horror can be matched by the present, position, in Russia. In the years 1919 and 1920. according to tho Special Commission of the Health Committee of the League of Nations, which investigated tho epidemic conditions in Russia, about twenty million, cases of typhus occurred in that stricken land. It is added: “This figure; of twenty million casts seems monstrous, but it must be. taken as a starting point in- any attempt to estimate the extent of the Eastern epidemic focus. The Russians, indeed, were satisfied that typhus had considerably decreased during 1920, but that meant a total for the year 1920 of 2 ( 939,000 official notifications —a truly gigantic figure for- n ‘ good- year,’ particularly if one beat's in mind that the annual pre-war average never exceeded 150,000 odd.” In April, 1921, there were over 400,000 official notifications, and it. has been acknowledged that these official figures ought to !)>• multiplied by at. least two. The committee added to its report tha statement; "And yot the scientific researches carried out throughout Russia would do justice t-o any country. Of course, they have, not discovered finally the etiology of typhus. But who has?"

Typhus has a considerable martyrology. Thai, its causative agent is present- in tin*, blood was shown in the first instance by Moczutovski, who inoculated himself with such blood, and died later os a consequence of his action; while only a few weeks ago that very gallant gentleman Mr Bacot laid down his life in Cairo in the service of his fellows while working on the same disease. The horrors of the notorious Wittenberg Camp are known to all, and there Major W. B. Fry and Captains A. C. Sutcliffe and S. Field; 'died of typhus in attending to their stricken fellow-soldiers. If the new germ proves to be in fact the -canfio of the disease, it may furnish us with a weapon against it. But for preventive purposes louse destruction is th© great ane only sure shield; for where there are no lice this discaso cannot spread.