I 
i 
SEDGWICK AND WINSLOW. 
BACILLUS OP TYPHOID PETER. 
prill 
ted 
new diagram exhibiting 
fourteen years, and 
shown that ai 
distant privies 
oo 
ted 
the curves of typhoid fever and <,Tnnnd wn^ i H 
pport of his ex])lanatioii of the 
r» 
l:ili 
(>!J 
ther 
ftictor of less universal importance than the poll 
might be the infection of air, food, and drink by genu 
o 
r 
1) 
fr 
surface of the ground, which must be dryer and more exposed to .^uch ndion wIm n iIm* 
ground water is low. 
Dr. Baker's theory regarding the pollution of wells at times of low water Hfcm^ «juit<» 
insufficient to account for such a universal phenomenon as tlio aufumnnl niiixlimim of 
typhoid fever, even with the additional suggestion as to air contagion. W* II walcr 
is by no means the most important source of tlie disease; and even as (o wells (he 
theory does not take all the facts into account. Other observers have alf('ni|i<fd in 
trace with some success an almost exactly opposite relation between fyphoi*! fever 
and excessive precipitation. Dr. F. H. Welch,'"'> for example, who iu<U^i\ that 1l. 
maximum of typhoid fever occurred in the last quarter of the year In Malta and In 
Bermuda, in the latter half of the year at Gibraltar, during the autumnal monlh% 
from March to May, — at the Cape of Good Hope, and in the warm season in India, 
finally concluded that " the i^reat natural assistant (in the spread of the discn^'^) i^ <he 
rainfall in 
giving 
to 
moisture for growth and putrefaction, in causing waici clrcu 
la(i 
on 
on the surface and in the subsoil, in its mechanical removal of material from drain 
and hidden receptacles." 
Whatever the explanation, it seems to be proven that at Munich in the pcrKx 
studied by Pettenkofer and his followers a real relation did exist between groun 
d typhoid 
In no other case, as far as we are aware, has another factor been 
excluded which normally varies inversely with the ground 
r 
ich dofs 
bear a plausible relation to 
the distribution of the typhoid germ. This factor 
temperature : and the seasonal curve in 
any 
Be 
in, can be more satisfactorily explained by 
places, Michigan, for example, and 
1 direct relation to the temperature 
by 
to the gr 
call attention to the importance of 
nd-water level. The first author forcibb 
perature factor was Murchlson. In 
to 
econd 
ad miss 
edition of his work on the continued feversr '>e g'^ve . table of t bo montby 
the London Fever Hospital f 
1848 
1870, of which th 
were as follows : 
J 
433 
p 
306 
