TYPHOID FEVER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 7775, 6 May 1886, Page 3

TYPHOID FEVER.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TINES. Sib, —The public are indebted to you for your able article, and for the letters of “ Medicus ” on the above subject. Whence the evil comes is now apparent to many who, no doubt, had but vague notions, if any at all, on this vital matter. How to prevent its propagation from the infected to the healthy yet wants to be shown. Knowledge on this point may save mauy from becoming victims to this destroyer, which in Britain alone sends 20,000 yearly to a premature grave. I frequently come across cases, aud when I ask the parties attending to the patients if they know what the nature of the disease is, and how it is propagated, as a rule, the answers betray perfect ignorance on both points. Did such know how the virus was communicated, they could limit the evil with almost absolute certainty to the first victim in the household. The eruptive fevers form a family, of which typhoid is one, the germs of each having a habitat in some part of the human body, where they form their nidus, or nest, and there propagate until they have exhausted the ground of nourishment, when they die out. The germs in this family are all parasites. That of smallpox, finding its nidus in the deep layer of the skin ; scarlet fever, in the superficial layer, and in the throat; and typhoid, in the glands of the intestines—a limited portion of the bowel. These glands of the intestines are quite rudimentary in infancy. They .commence to develop at about the second year of age, and ace at their highest growth from IQ to 25, after which they gradually diminish to from 40 to 50. Hence infants and old people are hardly ever attacked. Hence, too, the severe cases are found from 15 to 25, when these glands are at their best. Hence again, strong persons of full habit are the most likely to form the fatal subjects. Given an ahnndant crop of glands, or nidus, then a severe attack, and probable perforation of the bowel as a likely result. A delicate constitution means a .feeble crop of glands and a slight attack. 1 once knew a case where 16 were attacked, all between the ages of 15 and 22, and all of full habit, and only one'survived. The intestines then being the seat of the disease, the germs all pass off by the stools. The breath and vapors escaping from the body of the patient are perfectly harmless. If the stools are carefnlly disinfected and immediately removed, there need be no fear of contagion from a typhoid subject. There are two ways of contracting the disease. The germs may be imported in the air, or in the food we eat or drink. Given that we breathe the infected air given off from those abominable traps that line our streets, or the carts that prosecute their mission at midnight, or in a house where no attention has been immediately paid to the evacuations of a fever patient, the germ enters our lungs, and is caught up in the blopd circulation. We may yet escape, for the one passage where the wretched parasite may escape to the bowel and find its nidus is formed by an artery not the size of a goose quill. The probabilities then are that it may go the rounds of the system twenty times without finding that one entrance to evil doing, and be oast off, leaving us none tbs worse. Hut supposing we receive the germ in food, the odds are against our escape. If in a do) id substance, or in milk, for which latter this evil has a peculiar affinity, then we are doomed, for the substance is carried right into the intestines, where the germ is sure to find its nidus. If drank in water, the risk is not qnite so great, Water demands no digestion, but passes into the circulation directly, and it the stomach be empty, the probabilities are that the germs will miss their (nidus, and be voided by the renal organs harmlessly.—l am, &c., W. 0.0.