TYPHUS FEVER. This fever is known under various names, such as Spotted typhus, Jail fever, Ship fever, Camp fever, Military fever, Irish ague, Famine fever, Brain fever, Pestilential fever, Malignant fever, Ochlotic fever, Typho-rubeoloid.
“1. Typhus prevails for the most part in great and wide-spread epidemics.
“2. The epidemics appear during seasons of general scarcity and wants, or amidst hardships and privations arising from local causes, such as warfare, commercial failures, and strikes among the labouring population. The statement that they always last for three years and then subside is erroneous.
“3. During the intervals of epidemics, sporadic cases of typhus occur, particularly in Ireland, and in the large manufacturing towns of Scotland and England.
“4. Although some of the great epidemics of this country have commenced in Ireland, and spread thence to Britain, appearing first in those towns on the west coast of Britain where there was the freest intercourse with Ireland, it is wrong to imagine that all epidemics have commenced in Ireland, or that typhus is a disease essentially Irish. The disease appears wherever circumstances favorable to its development are present.
“5. In many epidemics typhus has been associated with relapsing fever, and the relative proportion of the two fevers has varied greatly.
“6. From the earliest times, typhus has been regarded as a disease of debility, forbidding depletion, and demanding support and stimulation.
“7. The chief exception to the last statement originated in the erroneous doctrines taught in the early part of this century, according to which the disease was looked upon as symptomatic of inflammation or congestion of internal organs.
“8. The success believed at one time to follow the practice of venesection was only apparent. It was due to the practice, for the most part, having been resorted to in cases of relapsing fever and acute inflammations, and to the result having been compared with those of the treatment by stimulation of the much more mortal typhus.
“9. Although typhus fever varies in its severity and duration at different times, and under different circumstances, there is no evidence of any change in its type or essential characters. The typhus of modern times is the same as that described by Fracastorius and Cordames. The period during which epidemic fever was said to present an inflammatory type was that in which relapsing fever was most prevalent, and the times in which the type has been described as adynamic