EDITORIAL. 
499 
1. Most often, it is after an attack of an infectious disease, 
well known or overlooked on account of its abnormal and de¬ 
ceiving aspect, such as is commonly the case with typhoid fever. 
The bacillus many times will remain after the clinical recov¬ 
ery from the disease. Many convalescents throw it off tem¬ 
porarily for weeks and months with their dejecta or their urine. 
They are only temporary carriers. But in other cases instead of 
months it is by years that the presence of the bacillus can he de¬ 
tected in an organism. And that may last io, 15, 20 years. The 
individuals are chronic carriers. 
2. Sometimes it is before the apparent manifestation of the 
infection, of which he will become the victim, that a healthy sub¬ 
jest may become a germ carrier ( precocious carrier ) and that 
he contributes to the contagion of a disease which he does not 
have apparently. 
Easy fact to explain, as the introduction of a pathogenous 
microbe in an organism does not immediately give rise to its mor¬ 
bid effects. An incubation is necessary. But yet, during this 
silent and varying length of time required for the eclosion of the 
disease itself, the microbe may still be thrown and give rise to 
spontaneous contagion. Diphtheria, typhoid fever, cerebro-spinal 
meningitis, dysentery, cholera, measles, scarlatina have too often 
been the way they developed. 
3. In a third modality, it is no longer patients that have re¬ 
covered from a previous attack or are in the incubative stag'e of 
the disease, but individuals zvho have not presented and will not 
ulteriorly present any of the symptoms of the disease in question, 
yet throw round them the seeds, germs of the disease. This fact 
may seem absurd; it is nevertheless bacteriologically demon¬ 
strated and of rational interpretation. These subjects have been 
contagionnes (contaminated), but were not open for the infec¬ 
tion; they keep in themselves the pathogenous microbes, but do 
not become diseased; they are not invaded by them, and as con¬ 
sequence may communicate them to other subjects which, less 
prepared, become for them a suitable ground. Those subjects 
form the type of carriers without germs. 
