xviii 
Notes  and  News. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
May,  185,9. 
Typhoid  Ffvf,r. — Dr.  Osier,  of  Baltimore,  in  an  address  on  this  subject 
before  the  New  York  State  Medical  Society,  laid  great  emphasis  on  the  fact  that 
for  very  many  years  the  medical  profession  had  been  fully  alive  to  the 
true  nature  of  typhoid  fever.  One  fact  stood  out  with  special  prominence — i.  e., 
that  with  clean  soil  and  pure  water  typhoid  fever  disappeared.  While  many 
advances  had  been  made  in  the  treatment  of  this  disease,  they  had  been  noth- 
ing compared  to  the  triumphs  of  sanitary  science.  The  medical  profession 
could  point  to  typhoid  fever  as  the  best  understood  and  the  most  carefully 
studied  of  the  acute  infectious  diseases — the  one  in  which  the  greatest  victories 
in  hygiene  had  been  won.  But  in  spite  of  these  triumphs,  we  had  had  a  rude 
awakening  last  fall  in  the  many  soldiers  who  fell  victims  to  this  dread  disease. 
Ours  was  a  nation,  Dr.  Osier  said,  of  contradictions  and  paradoxes — a  clean 
people,  careful  in  personal  hygiene,  but  reckless  regarding  public  sanitation. 
Dr.  Smart,  the  great  authority  on  hygiene,  recently  made  the  statement  that 
the  cities  of  this  country,  as  regards  the  matter  of  water-supply,  were  at  least  a 
century  behind  the  cities  of  Europe.  In  organized  sanitation  Michigan  was  one 
of  the  model  States.  The  problem  of  typhoid  fever,  Dr.  Osier  declared,  was  no 
longer  in  the  hands  of  the  profession  ;  even  the  lesson  of  the  late  war  had  prob- 
ably not  been  bitter  enough  to  teach  the  public  that  sanitary  science  should 
come  within  the  sphere  of  practical  politics.  Our  good  natured  citizens,  who 
always  voted  a  straight  party  ticket,  were  not  deeply  interested  in  the  problems 
of  sanitary  science  ;  they  were  more  easily  led  by  a  Perkins  or  a  Munyon  than 
by  a  Lister  or  a  Koch.  Our  glorious  land  has  been  recently  described  as  ' '  God's 
own  country,  with  man's  own  backyard,  and  the  devil's  own  cesspool." 
A  Conclusive;  Proof  of  the  Efficacy  of  Vaccination— conclusive  to 
those  who  have  not  lost  both  their  logical  and  their  common  sense — is  fur- 
nished by  the  experience  of  the  Germans,  and  especially  of  the  German  army. 
Dr.  Bizzozzero,  of  Rome,  according  to  the  Lancet,  thus  summarizes  the  German 
experience  : 
1 1  Germany  stands  alone  in  fulfilling  in  great  measure  the  demands  of  hygiene, 
having  in  consequence  of  the  calamitous  small-pox  epidemic  of  1870-71  enacted 
the  law  of  1874  which  'makes  vaccination  obligatory  in  the  first  year  of  life 
and  revaccination  also  obligatory  at  the  tenth  year.'  What  was  the  result? 
With  a  population  of  50,000,000,  having  in  1871  lost  143,000  lives  by  small-pox, 
she  found  by  her  law  of  1874  the  mortality  diminished  so  rapidly  that  to-day 
the  disease  numbers  only  116  victims  a  year.  These  cases,  moreover,  occur 
almost  exclusively  in  towns  on  her  frontier.  If  it  were  true,  continued  Pro- 
fessor Bizzozzero,  that  a  good  vaccination  does  not  protect  from  small-pox  we 
ought  to  find  in  small-pox  epidemics  that  the  disease  diffuses  itself  in  the  well- 
vaccinated  no  less  than  in  the  non-vaccinated  countries.  But  it  is  not  so.  In 
1870-71,  during  the  Franco-German  war,  the  two  peoples  interpenetrated  each 
other,  the  German  having  its  civil  population  vaccinated  optionally,  but  its 
army  completely  revaccinated,  while  the  French  (population  and  army  alike) 
■were  vaccinated  perfunctorily.  Both  were  attacked  by  small-pox  ;  but  the 
French  army  numbered  23,000  deaths  by  it,  while  the  German  army  had  only 
278  ;  and  in  the  same  tent,  breathing  the  same  air,  the  French  wounded  were 
heavily  visited  by  the  disease,  while  the  German  wounded,  having  been  revac- 
cinated, had  not  a  single  case." 
