THE FIGHT AGAINST TYPHOID GERMS
IN one more campaign the immediate future seems likely to yield great results perhaps almost as important as those resulting from the discovery of antitoxin. This will be from the use of the new anti-typhoid serum, which the Department of Health in December, 1912, decided to use as extensively as possible in New York. This decision followed close on the War Department’s public declaration that the anti-typhoid serum had proved a success, virtually eliminating the disease from the army. In 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in the United States than of the plague in India, despite the fact that India’s population is two and a half times that of the United States. In 1907 there were more cases of typhoid in New York than of pellagra in Italy, though Italy’s population is six times that of New York. In this work, as in children’s diseases and in tuberculosis, New York is a pioneer, and yet New York is better off regarding typhoid than many other American cities, for it has a lower typhoid death-rate than Boston, Chicago, Washington, or Philadelphia; yet its typhoid death-rate is higher than that of London, Paris, Berlin, or Hamburg.
Last spring when Wilbur Wright, the aviator, died of typhoid fever at the age of forty-five, several newspapers were honest enough to speak of it as a murder—a murder by the American people, through neglect and ignorance, of a genius who, had he been allowed, might have lived to be of still more distinguished service to the world.
In the last two years the New York Department of Health has been able to trace definitely several typhoid-fever outbreaks. In nearly every instance it was found that the disease could be traced to a “carrier.” A carrier is a person who has recovered from an attack of typhoid, but who remains infected. One outbreak of four hundred cases was traced to the infection of a milk-supply by a typhoid carrier who had had the disease forty-seven years before. In another outbreak of fifty cases the contamination was traced to a man who had the disease seven years before.
Within the last few months the case of “Typhoid Mary” has received much attention. This woman has recently brought suit against the Department of Health for damaging her career as a cook. For more than six months she was kept in a sort of exile by the department. Before that time she had been a cook in many households, and wherever she went typhoid fever followed her. Although she had suffered with the disease many years before she was apprehended, the germs were said to be still very lively in her system. The authorities asserted that her blood tests revealed that she was likely to communicate typhoid to any one at any time; and therefore Mary did no more cooking.
There is no telling how many carriers are loose in New York at present, and the only known way of averting the danger is by the use of the serum which the army has found efficacious. It is estimated that about three per cent. of those recovering from typhoid become bacillus-carriers. As yet typhoid vaccination is not compulsory among the public at large, as in the army; but a strong movement is felt in the city to make it so. When typhoid-fever becomes as thoroughly controlled as smallpox, or even as diphtheria, the death-rate will drop another point or two. It will be the last of the filth diseases to go. It is asserted by competent authorities that eighty-five per cent. of the cases are preventable.