TYPHOID FEVER 139 



the coal-tar products above mentioned is to be recom- 

 mended (carbolic acid, lysol, creolin, or tricresol). 



The prevention of typhoid fever by protective in- 

 oculations has been tested on a large scale, by sur- 

 geons of the English army, in India and in South 

 Africa. Sterilised cultures of the typhoid bacillus 

 are used for this purpose. The inoculation gives rise 

 to local tumefaction and to more or less general dis- 

 turbance of brief duration. It is recommended that 

 a second inoculation be practised at the end of a 

 week. Wright, the originator of the method, re- 

 ports that among 11,295 British soldiers inoculated 

 in India, the percentage of those who subsequently 

 contracted typhoid fever was 0.95, while 2.5 per cent, 

 of those not inoculated suffered an attack of the 

 disease. The soldiers in South Africa, during the 

 Boer War, who had been inoculated are reported to 

 have suffered attacks of typhoid in the proportion 

 of six per thousand, while those not inoculated suf- 

 fered to the extent of nine per thousand. The dif- 

 ference is not sufficiently great to give confidence in 

 inoculations by Wright's method as a reliable pre- 

 ventive measure. In this disease, as in cholera and 

 bubonic plague, our main reliance should be upon the 

 sanitary measures heretofore referred to, and espe- 

 cially upon disinfection of excreta and sterilisation 

 of drinking water. 



