
May 20, 1915] 

method, and conclusions are arrived at which 
will be sure to provoke discussion. | Whatever 
may be the final results of such discussions, this 
book will probably take rank as a landmark in 
the study of ethnology. A. C. Happon. 

TYPHUS FEVER. 
YPHUS fever, which has just appeared in 
some of the prisoners’ camps in Germany 
and is rife in Serbia, has been one of the great 
epidemic diseases of the world. Hirsch  re- 
marked :—“The history of typhus is written in 
those dark pages of the world’s story which tell 
of the grievous visitations of mankind by war, 
famine, and misery of every kind.” 
The name is of no great antiquity, for it was 
applied to a malady or group of maladies first by 
Sauvages in 1759. Until then, from the time of 
Hippocrates downwards, it had been employed 
to designate a confused state of intellect, with a 
tendency to stupor. It was, in fact, not until 
1850 that typhus fever was finally differentiated 
from typhoid or enteric fever by the researches 
of Jenner. One of the older synonyms for the 
disease was jail fever, and in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, at the first three of the famous “ Black 
Assizes,” judges, sheriffs, and jurymen were 
stricken with it as the result of infection from 
prisoners brought for trial.. Another name for- 
merly given to it is Morbus castrensis or ‘“ mili- 
tary fever,” on account of the ravages occasioned 
by it among soldiers and camp followers from the 
time of the Thirty Years’ War and the English 
Civil War down to the siege of Sebastopol. Owing 
to the character of the eruption, typhus fever has 
sometimes been termed “spotted fever” (to be 
distinguished from  cerebro-spinal fever, also 
known as spotted fever), and the German name 
is flecktyphus, also typhus exanthematicus, to 
distinguish it from typhus abdominalis, typhoid 
or enteric fever. The French name is similarly 
typhus exanthématique. Brill’s disease, met with 
in New York, and Tabadillo of Mexico, seem to 
be manifestations of it. Few countries have 
suffered more than Ireland, and the disease has 
lingered in the outer Hebrides, but of late years 
has been practically unknown in England, and is 
seen but rarely in Scotland. 
The invasion of typhus is, in the majority of 
cases, like pneumonia, sudden and severe after 
an incubation period of about twelve days. On 
the fourth or fifth day the eruption appears, first 
measly in character, but appearing on the wrists, 
trunk, and thighs, and afterwards becoming 
hemorrhagic. The patient then suffers from 
severe fever with its usual concomitants, passing 
into extreme prostration. |The nervous system 
suffers severely, and there is great muscular rest- 
lessness and tremor, excitement and delirium. In 
favourable cases the attack ends comparatively 
suddenly about the fourteenth day. 
There are, of course, considerable variations in 
the course of the disease in individual cases; it 
is always to be regarded asa serious affection, and 
NO2377, VOL. 95] 
NATURE 


B21 
| the average death-rate for all ages under favour- 
able conditions is 15~19 per cent.; no age is ex- 
empt. An attack of typhus affords marked pro- 
tection, and second attacks are as rare as those 
of small-pox. No special treatment for it has yet 
been discovered. 
The etiology of the disease is still uncertain : 
no specific micro-organism has been discovered, 
but it is probably protozoan in nature. 
Typhus is markedly infectious, and the infec- 
tivity is greater the larger the number of cases 
which are aggregated together. The mode of 
spread for a long time was uncertain, and until 
recently it was regarded as being conveyed by 
the emanations from the patient. A few years 
ago, in the epidemic which occurred in Aberdeen, 
Prof. Matthew Hay made the pregnant suggestion, 
on epidemiological grounds, that the disease 
might be conveyed by fleas. Further investiga- 
tions have conclusively proved that it is conveyed 
by the body-louse, possibly by the head-louse also. 
This important fact explains how it is that typhus 
is sO prone to appear in times of stress, war, 
and famine—when misery prevails and personal 
cleanliness is difficult or impossible to maintain. 
Prevention of the spread of the disease largely 
resolves. itself, therefore, into extermination of 
lice, and much attention is now being directed to 
the means which may attain this end. R. T. H. 
AN. ADVISORY COUNCIL ON INDUSTRIAL 
RESEARCH. 
Ge proposed formation of an Advisory 
Council concerned with industrial and 
scientific research was announced by Mr. J. A. 
Pease, President of the Board of Education, to 
the deputation of which we gave an account last 
week. The scheme was described by Mr. Pease 
in Committee of the House of Commons on 
May 13 in connection with the Education Esti- 
mates; and the debate which followed upon it 
was one of the most important from a scientific 
point of view that has been heard in the House 
for a long time. 
The general question of the relation of science 
to the State, and the particular work which a 
suitably constituted Advisory Council could under- 
take, are dealt with elsewhere in this issue of 
Nature by Sir William Ramsay. We need 
scarcely remind our readers that the need for 
increased provision for research in pure and 
applied science has been urged in these columns 
for many years by leaders in the scientific world 
concerned not only with the advancement of 
natural knowledge, but also with the promotion 
of national prosperity. For the past ten years 
the British Science Guild has been continuously 
endeavouring, with little encouragement, to secure 
public and official recognition of scientific research 
and organisation as essential factors of industrial 
progress. It has shown over and over again that 
whereas in Germany the State fosters all work 
and institutions engaged in scientific work and 
advanced technology, and in the United States 
