132 



poison might communicate to one ulceration, and to the other none." 

 Dr. Swett ingenuously added, "that his belief in the non-identity of 

 the diseases lessened daily, and he could not discriminate between 

 cases presenting intestinal lesions (typhoid), and those which did not 

 (typhus)."* Dr. Griscom, one of the physicians of the New York 

 Hospital, states, that in ten autopsies of patients dying of ship fever 

 in that Institution, in July, August, and September, 1847, six pre- 

 sented follicular disease of the intestines. Peyer's plates were pro- 

 minent in four, and ulcerated in two. Facts of this kind are so fre- 

 quently observed in the New York Hospitals that they have, in a 

 measure, ceased to attract the attention of many physicians once 

 deeply interested in their investigation, in reference to the question 

 of the identity of typhus and typhoid fever. 



To the same conclusion tend the inquiries, relating to this subject, 

 in other quarters of our country. A writer in the American Jour- 

 nal of the Medical Sciences,^ in speaking, it is presumed, of the ship 

 fever in Philadelphia, says: "We have lately seen a great number of 

 cases of fever in recently arrived Irish emigrants — the majority of 

 the cases were of well-marked typhus fever; a few were of equally 

 well-marked typhoid fever; while, in a third class of cases, the cha- 

 racteristics of these two fevers were so completely blended that it 

 was very difficult to determine which of the two predominated." 

 And he adds, " here, then, Ave have persons who have been exposed 

 to precisely the same morbific causes, attacked with fever of a simi- 

 lar type, bearing the characters in some of the typhoid fever, in 

 others of the typhus, and in others again a union, as it were, of the 

 characteristics of both. This fact would seem to prove, that the 

 typhoid is a mere form or variety of the typhus fever." He also 

 remarks, that "in the present state of our knowledge on this subject 

 it is, we conceive, much safer to consider the typhoid as one of the 

 forms of typhus fever." 



In view of the facts which have been stated, it seems to the com- 

 mittee that no reasonable doubt can remain that typhus and typhoid 

 fever are identical. Were medical men united in this conclusion, 

 might we not hope, that with undivided attention, and a union of 

 effort, more rapid advances would be made in determining the causes 

 of the morbid condition of the Peyerian glands and other organs 

 which occur in some cases of typhus and not in others? On this sub- 



* Annalist, vol. ii. p. 265, No. for April 15, 1848. 

 f No. xxix. p. 202, January, 1848. 



