640 Typhoid Fever 



Lower Animals. — Typhoid fever is communicable to animals with 

 difficulty. They are not infected by bacilli contained in fecal matter 

 or by the pure cultures mixed with the food, and are not injured 

 by the injection of blood from t)^hoid patients. Gafifky failed 

 completely to produce any symptoms suggestive of typhoid fever 

 in rabbits, guinea-pigs, white rats, mice, pigeons, chickens, and 

 calves, and found that Java apes could feed daily upon food pol- 

 luted with typhoid bacilli for a considerable time, yet without 

 symptoms. Griinbaum* produced typhoid fever in chimpanzees 

 by inoculating them with the bacillus. The introduction of viru- 

 lent cultures into the abdominal cavity of animals is followed by 

 peritonitis. 



Germano and Maureaf found that mice succumbed in from one to 

 three days after intraperitoneal injection of i or 2 cc. of a twenty- 

 four-hour-old bouillon culture. Subcutaneous injections- in rabbits 

 and dogs caused abscesses. 



Losener found the introduction of 3 mg. of an agar-agar culture 

 into the abdominal cavity of guinea-pigs to be fatal. 



Petruschkyt found that mice convalescent from subcutaneous 

 injections of typhoid cultures frequently suffered from a more or less 

 widespread necrosis of the skin at the point of injection. 



Prophylaxis. — One of the most important and practical points 

 for the physician to grasp in relatioa to the subject of typhoid fever 

 is the highly infective character of the discharges, both feces and urine. 

 In every case the greatest care should be taken for their proper 

 disinfection, a rigid attention paid to all the details of cleanliness in 

 the sick-room, and the careful sterilization of all articles which are 

 soiled by the patient. If country practitioners were as careful in this 

 particular as they should be, the disease would be much less frequent 

 in regions remote from the filth and squalor of large cities with their 

 unmanageable slums, and the distribution of the bacilli to villages 

 and towns, by milk, and by watercourses polluted in their infancy, 

 might be checked. 



In large cities where typhoid fever has been endemic the incidence 

 of the disease has been enormously reduced by purification of the 

 water-supply. Where this measure is not possible, the safety of the 

 individual citizens can be promoted by using bottled pure waters 

 for drinking purposes or by boiling the water for domestic 

 consumption. 



In military camps, etc., the fly as a carrier of the infection must 

 first be excluded from the latrines and then as well from the kitchens 

 and mess tents. When epidemics are in progress, green vegetables 

 and oysters that may be polluted by infected water must be guarded 

 against. 



* "Brit. Med. Jour.," April 9, 1904. 



t "Ziegler's Beitrage," Bd. xn, Heft 3, p. 494. 



i "Zeitschrift fur Hygiene," 1892, Bd. xn, p. 261. 



