130 THE HOUSE FLY— DISEASE CARRIER 



Tenth German Army Corps in the summer of 1909 

 was traced to a chronic carrier in the case of a woman 

 who prepared vegetables and who had assisted in the 

 preparation of vegetable salads. The typhoid bacillus 

 grows on the surface of potatoes readily, and this ac- 

 counted for the outbreak, on the necessary supposition 

 that the woman was of uncleanly habits. The curious 

 point in this case was that she had had typhoid thirty- 

 six years previously for the only time. In the same 

 summer there was an epidemic of the fever in George- 

 town, D. C. This was traced by milk routes to a cer- 

 tain milk dealer, who was a woman and who on ex- 

 amination was shown to be a chronic carrier. 



In the same year, Aldrich, in the Journal of the 

 Royal Army Medical Corps for September, page 225, 

 made the generalization that the combined observations 

 of a large number of investigators in various countries 

 showed that about three per cent, of the convalescent 

 typhoid patients become chronic carriers, and of these 

 eighty per cent, are women. About this time the Ger- 

 man Government conducted an anti-typhoid campaign 

 in Southwest Germany, and in his report Klinger 

 showed that 400 chronic carriers were found and that 

 there were probably others. 



Earlier than this, Dr. W. G. Savage (1907) made 

 three points of interest in this connection : ( i ) Ty- 

 phoid bacilli are frequently excreted in the urine in 

 about twenty per cent of the cases, but the obvious 

 practical measures resulting from this knowledge are 

 not habitually taken. (2) Typhoid bacilli may persist 



