Prophylaxis 645 



symptoms suggestive of typhoid fever in rabbits, guinea- 

 pigs, white rats, mice, pigeons, chickens, and calves, and 

 found that Java apes could feed daily upon food polluted 

 with typhoid bacilli for a considerable time, yet without 

 symptoms. Grunbaum* produced typhoid fever in the 

 chimpanzee by inoculation with the bacillus. This seems 

 to prove its specific nature. The introduction of virulent 

 cultures into the abdominal cavity of animals is followed by 

 peritonitis. 



Germano and Maureaf found that mice succumbed in 

 from one to three days after intraperitoneal injection of 

 i or 2 c.c. of a twenty-four-hour-old bouillon culture. Sub- 

 cutaneous injections in rabbits and dogs caused abscesses. 



Losener found the introduction of 3 mg. of an agar-agar 

 culture into the abdominal cavity of guinea-pigs to be 

 fatal. 



Petruschky t found that mice convalescent from sub- 

 cutaneous injections of typhoid cultures frequently suffered 

 from a more or less widespread necrosis of the skin at the 

 point of injection. 



Prophylaxis. One of the most important and practical 

 points for the physician to grasp in relation to the subject of 

 typhoid fever is the highly virulent character of the dis- 

 charges, both feces and urine. In every case the greatest 

 care should be taken for their proper disinfection, a rigid 

 attention paid to all the details of cleanliness in the sick- 

 room, and the careful sterilization of all articles which are 

 soiled by the patient. If country practitioners were as 

 careful in this particular as they should be, the disease 

 \\ould be much less frequent in regions remote from the 

 filth and squalor of large cities with their unmanageable 

 slums, and the distribution of the bacilli to villages and 

 towns, by milk and by watercourses polluted in their in- 

 fancy, might be checked. 



In large cities where typhoid fever has been endemic the 

 incidence of the disease has been enormously reduced by 

 purification of the water-supply. Where this measure is not 

 possible, the safety of the individual citizens can be promoted 

 by using bottled pure waters for drinking purposes or by 

 boiling the water for domestic consumption. 



* "Brit. Med. Jour.," April 9, 1904. 



f "Ziegler's Beitrage," Bd. xn, Heft, 3, p. 494. 



% "Zeitschrift fur Hygiene," 1892, Bd. xn, p. 261. 



