XLVIII. 



ON TYPHOID OE ENTEEIC FEVEE IN INDIAN 

 GAOLS, AND ON THE EELATIONS OF THAT 

 DISEASE AND OF CHOLEEA TO THE DEY- 

 EAETH SYSTEM OF CONSEEVANCY. 



Dr. Buchanan, in the Appendix (No. 4, pp. 96, 97, 106) to the 

 Twelfth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council (for 

 1869, published in 1870), has thrown doubt upon the validity of 

 certain reasonings of mine (in 'The Lancet,' March 20th, 1869, 

 pp. 411, 412) as to the possibility of a dry-earth system of con- 

 servancy favouring the spread of typhoid (or enteric or pythogenic) 

 fever. One of my arguments having been based upon the fact that 

 fever spread in the gaols of India in spite of the introduction into 

 them of that system for dealing with excreta, Dr. Buchanan 

 objects that this argument is of no cogency unless it be shown that 

 the Indian fever in question is enteric and not typhus fever. 

 When I wrote I was of opinion that this Indian gaol fever was 

 enteric and not typhus, and further investigation has confirmed me 

 in this belief. 



In 1869 I did not think it necessary to lay any emphasis upon 

 this point, for I thought it was a settled, received, and established 

 belief. Dr. Murchison, in his chapter on the ' Geographical Dis- 

 tribution of Typhus Fever * (p. 58 of ' A Treatise on the Continued 

 Fevers of Great Britain,' 1862), had said that there were *no 

 authentic records of typhus, such as we see it in this country, 

 having been met with in Asia, Africa, or the tropical parts of 

 America.' If, in the same connexion. Dr. Murchison allows that 

 the ' Pali disease ' and the true bubonic plague may be analogous 

 to, if not identical with, typhus, I have to say that between typhus 

 as thus locally represented and the gaol fevers as described in the 

 Indian gaols there is scarcely a single point in common ; and if 



