Typhoid fever : its causation, transmission and prevention / by George C. Whipple, with an introductory essay by William T. Sedgwick.

  • Whipple, George Chandler, 1866-1924.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Typhoid fever : its causation, transmission and prevention / by George C. Whipple, with an introductory essay by William T. Sedgwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    34/494 (page 28)
    The parasite of typhoid fever also seems to be com- paratively hardy. This at least is indicated by its frequent survival in water and milk, and its occasional occurrence in oysters, ice, air, sewage and elsewhere outside of the human body, which must probably be regarded as its most favorable habitat. For this reason it offers special advantages as a sanitary test or sanitary index of the general purity of food and drink as regards infectious microbes; the argument being that if this comparatively hardy parasite is absent, other infectious micro-organisms are probably absent also. If this one is present, it obviously matters comparatively little about others, since typhoid fever alone is sufficiently alarming. It is, of course, easy to show the inadequacy of this or any other single sanitary index, since, for example, a milk free from typhoid has been known to cause hundreds of cases of scarlet fever. And yet it is roughly true that for any community which has constantly, year after year, a good record in respect to typhoid fever, the presumption is that sanitary con- ditions are at least fair. Strictly speaking, however, no such conclusion is justified, unless for the water supply, which, as far as is now known, is not, like milk, a ready vehicle of other infections. One of the most striking and important of recent ad- vances in our knowledge of the typhoid parasite is the fact that it appears to linger in the body of its recovered host, sometimes for months and even years, passing off