already prevalent, the last rule should be put in force for all the houses, whether there be fever in them or not, and for all public drains.
“In the event of death, the body should be placed as soon as possible in a coffin sprinkled with disinfectants. Early burial is on all accounts desirable.
“As the hands of those attending on the sick often become unavoidably soiled by the discharges from the bowels, they should be frequently washed.
“The sick room should be kept well ventilated day and night.
“The greatest possible care should be taken with regard to the drinking water. When there is the slightest risk of its having become tainted with fever poison, water should be got from a pure source, or should at least be boiled before being drunk.
“Immediately after the illness is over, whether ending in death or recovery, the dresses worn by the nurses should be washed or destroyed, and the bed and room occupied by the sick should be thoroughly disinfected. These are golden rules.
“Where they are neglected the fever may become a deadly scourge; where they are strictly carried out it seldom spreads beyond the person first attacked.”
No part of the globe appears to be exempt from the visitations of typhoid fever, since it occurs not only in all the older countries of Europe and Asia and Africa, but in those also included in the North and South American Continents, as well as in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. It would appear also to have prevailed in the earliest ages, since it is evidently alluded to in the works of Hippocrates, Galen, and others. Later writers, including Sydenham and Hoffman, also constantly refer to it under a different name.
Pathologists differ as to the time that this disease lies dormant in the system before developing itself. Some practitioners contend that the usual period is from ten to fourteen days, whilst others think it is much less than this, and, in some instances, that it may not exceed one or two days.
The late Dr Murchison entertained the latter opinion. The symptoms, when they show themselves, are as follows:—An irritable condition of the stomach, accompanied by sickness or vomiting; pain, with more or less tenderness, about the abdomen; sometimes the patient suffers from great constipation, at others from diarrhœa; he also experiences great prostration of strength, has a feeble pulse, and a brown furred tongue; he is extremely restless, and at night frequently delirious; the lower limbs are frequently cold; he passes but little urine, and that of an offensive smell; the stools are dark, offensive, and very frequently bloody, this latter being a very characteristic accompaniment of typhoid fever. Bleeding from the nose sometimes