IS TYPHOID PREVENTIBLE?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXVIIII, Issue 12237, 27 January 1897, Page 2

IS TYPHOID PREVENTIBLE?

Our almost entire freedom from typhoid during the last four or five years has caused our residents to regard with more apprehension than they would otherwise havo done the cases that have occurred ia th. Springvale suburb. There was a time when typhoid was hardly ever absent from the larger towns in -the hot summer season. Improved drainage bas driven it away, but it haunts the ill-drained suburbs still. Laat Friday's New Zealand Herald says that the great proportion ot typhoid cases admitted into tha Auckland District Hospital are from suburban and country districts. The causes of typhoid and its preventibility are put in a nutshell by that wellknown journal, the English Hospital, which, asking the question " Can typhoid be prevented ?" answers itself in the following terms : — ' " Well, either it cau or it cannot ; either it is a disease whose cause we know and' cau deal practically i with T or it remains still one of those mysteries which baffle science and practice alike. But typhoid is not now a ' mystery ' to the man of science ; of that we aro sure. It is, on the contrary, a well- understood and entirely manageable and preventable malady. Dr T. E. Hayward, medical officer of health for Haydock, Lancashire, tells his parish in his annual report not only that it is preventible, but also by , what precise aud simple means it may be prevented. Wo have had occasion before to express approval of Dr Eayward's intelligence and thoroughness "as a medical officer of health, and we commend with confidence his tersely expressed ' Principles of Typhoid Prevention' as made public in his report for 1895, 'Typhoid is a preventible disease,' says -this authority. 'Itis a disease of filth, and especially of the filth of human excrement.' That is to be taken as tho beginning of knowledge, the ABO of typhoid prevention, by the unscientific. The next step is equally easy. Typhoid is a disease of bacilli, typhoid bacilli, and the bacilli we find in human excrement, and iv drinking water fouled, by such excrement. It is probable that uc man or woman ever takes typhoid except by swallowing some typhoid baoiili. They may be swallowed, as we have said, in drinking water, or they may be flying about iv the air iv the neighbourhood of typhoid excrement, and may be swallowed with mouthfuls of air. What, then, is the first and last commandment of typhoid prevention V ' Cleanliness ; personal and pnblic cleanliness.' It is all there. If we keep ourselves clean ; if we keep our drinking water clean ; if we keep our closets aud our drains, our kitchens, sculleries, gardons, 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."