Is Typhoid Preventible

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7835, 30 January 1897, Page 4

Is Typhoid Preventible

I Any man or woman who has over struggled through ten, twelve, or fifteen weeks' experience of a determined attack of typhoid foyer will think (says the Knglish Hospital) that we havo placed an exceedingly important question at; the head of this annotation. Can typhoid be prevented ? Well, either it can or it cannot; eithor it is a disease whose cause we know and can deal practically with, or it remains still one of those mystories which baffle science and practice alike. But typhoid is not now a " mystery " to the man of science ; of that we are .sure. It is, on the contrary, a well-understood and entirely manageable and preventible malady. Dr T. E Hayward, medical officer for health for Haydock, Lancashire, tells his parish in his annual report not only that is preventible, but also by ivliat precise and simple means it can be prevented. We have had occasion before to express approval of Dr Hayward's intelligence and thoroughness as a medical officer of health, and wecommend with confidence his tersely expressed "Principles of Typhoid Prevention," as made publicinhis report for 1595. " Typhoid is a prev«-sn-lible disease," says this authority. "It is :\ disease of filth, and especially of the filth of human excrement." That is to be taken as the beginning of knowledge, the A. B C of typhoid prevuntion by the unscientific. The next stop is equally easy. Typhoid is a disease of bacilli, typhoid bacilli, and the bacilli we lind in human excrement, and in drinking water fouled l>3' such excrement. It is probable that no man or woman ever takes typhoid except by swallowing some typhoid bacilli. They may be swallowed, as we have said, in drinking water, or they may be flying übout in the air in the neighborhood of typhoid excrement, and may be swallowed with mouthfuls of uir. What, then, is the first and last commandment of typhoid prevention ? " Cleanliness ; personal and public cleanliness." It is all there. If we keep ourselves clean ; if we keep our drinking water clean ; if we keep our closets and our drains, our kitchens, sculleries, gardens, streets, and towns' entirely clean, typhoid will be practically as great a stranger to most of us as is the ghost of King Solomon or the shade of the extinct deinotherium.