132 TYPHOID FEVER 



Summing up he says : — " Experience seems to show that 

 infection conveyed by flies' legs, natural though it may appear 

 to all from experiments carried out to prove its possibility, is not 

 a common nor even a considerable cause of enteric fever. On 

 the other hand infection by the excrement of flies bred in an 

 infected material explains many conclusions previously difficult 

 to accept. In a word, it is the breeding ground that constitutes 

 the danger, not the ground where the flies feed." 



The cultures which have just been described were sent to 

 Lieutenant-Colonel Semple, Director of the Central Research 

 Institute, Kasauli, who stated that they were undoubtedly 

 B. typhosus. Amongst other tests he immunized rabbits with these 

 cultures and found that their serum agglutinated stock cultures 

 of B. typhosus in high dilutions. 



In a later paper (p. 675) Faichnie says: — "Since writing 

 my first paper on this subject, I have found B. typhosus in flies 

 from Sehore, once ; from Kamptee, twice ; from Nasirabad, once 

 in flies from the bungalow of an officer who had enteric fever, 

 and once from flies in the Officers' Mess there ; from Nowgong, 

 twice, once in the flies from the Royal Artillery Coffee Shop, 

 and again in flies from the trenching ground, making a total of 

 nine in three months. Except those from Nasirabad, the flies 

 were always flamed before examination, and a control of the 

 washed flies was taken before crushing, so there is no doubt the 

 bacillus was actually in the interior of the fly, probably in 

 the intestine." He does not state whether agglutination tests 

 were applied or not to these organisms. 



Cochrane (191 2) gives an interesting account of a small 

 outbreak of eight cases which occurred in April and May 191 1 

 at St George's, Bermuda. The first patient became ill on 

 April 15th, the second on the 21st, the third on the 23rd, the 

 fourth on the 24th, the fifth and sixth on May ist, the seventh 

 on May 7th and the eighth on May 8th. 



Well-marked agglutinatioii reactions with B. typhosus were 

 obtained in cases i, 5, 6, 7 and 8, and the bacillus was isolated 

 by blood cultures from cases 2, 3 and 4. 



" Investigations made at St George's on April 30th suggested 

 no definite source of infection for the first four cases, but it was 



