TYPHUS FEVER IN INDOCHINA. 



By A. Yebsin and J. J. Vassal. 1 

 (From the Pasteur Institute of Nhatrang, Annam. 



I. 



On May 4, 1906, a thousand or so Tonquin coolies were landed at 

 Nhatrang to serve on the railway- in course of construction between 

 Phanrang andi Nhatrang. In spite of their youth they were men who 

 had suffered, and they brought with them the poverty and the disease of 

 their country. They were therefore predisposed to catch local endemics, 

 especially malaria, but at the same time they showed affections which are 

 perhaps limited to Tonquin and which in any case have not yet penetrated 

 into South Annam. That recurrent fever came in this way, has already 

 been made known by one of us; typhus fever will now receive our 

 attention. 



Our observations are not numerous, and if we have delayed their 

 publication it is because we hoped to supplement them with new ones, 

 but the Tonquinese handicraftsmen have disappeared from our district, 

 and with them the means of pursuing a study which now could be under- 

 taken again more easily in Tonquin. 



Nevertheless, our experimental investigations throw new light on the 

 pathogeny of typhus fever and leave no doubt as to the diagnosis of the 

 cases observed in Nhatrang. If writers have dwelt at length on the 

 distribution of typhus fever in Europe, records of its extension in 

 Asia are brief. It exists in Persia, China, and Japan (Netter), but it 

 seems to have attracted but little attention in India, It has never before 

 been noted in the French possessions in Indo-China. 



II. 



We have been able to follow out seven observations on seven Tonquinese 

 working on the embankment at Hoatan Suoi-Giau, young men between 

 18 and 20 years old, coming from the Provinces Ninh-Binh, Nam-Dinh. 

 and Ha-nam. Transported under bad sanitary conditions in a crowded 

 and badly organized boat, they were at once obliged to give themselves 



^ead at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Philippine islands Medical Associa- 

 tion, February 28, 1908. 



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