It frequently infested the German armies during the Franco German war of 1869-70, and committed great havoc both amongst the hosts of Russia and Turkey in the late war between those countries.
When we turn to the civil population, we
find that typhus has been no less ruthless, and has slain its myriads of these also. Confining our attention to our own country, we find it to have especially devastated Ireland, which has suffered from no less than eleven violent outbreaks of typhus within the last 130 years.
In one of these visitations, viz. that of 1840, 80,000 people are estimated to have died from the disease. The largest recorded epidemic of typhus within our islands during the present century was that of 1846. It extended over the whole of the British islands, and the number of persons attacked by it were nearly 1,400,000, out of which 1,000,000 occurred in Ireland. “The Irish flocked to England in thousands, bringing the pestilence with them. It therefore was extremely prevalent in Liverpool, no less than 10,000 persons dying of typhus in that city.”[246] The latest outbreaks in England have been in 1862 and 1869; they were principally confined to London.
[246] Blyth.
Dr Murchison says that 14,000 persons were admitted to the London Fever Hospital during the two epidemics, and that amongst them a small number only were Irish.
All European countries, as well as North America and some parts of Asia, suffer from the ravages of this alarming disease. Africa, however, as well as Australia and New Zealand, are said to be exempt from it.
Symptoms.—The symptoms of typhus are thus described by Dr Murchison:—“More or less sudden invasion, marked by rigors or chilliness; frequent compressible pulse; tongue furred, and ultimately dry and brown; bowels in most cases constipated; skin warm and dry; a rubeloid rash appearing between the fourth and seventh days, the spots never appearing in successive crops, at first slightly elevated, and disappearing on pressure, but after the second day persistent, and often becoming converted into true petechiæ; great and early prostration; heavy flushed countenance; injected conjunctivæ; wakefulness and obtuseness of the mental faculties, followed, at the end of the first week, by delirium, which is sometimes acute and noisy, but oftener low and wandering; tendency to stupor and coma, tremors, subsultus, and involuntary evacuations, with contracted pupils. Duration of the fever from ten to twenty-one days, usually fourteen. In the dead body no specific lesion, but hyperæmia of all the internal organs, softening and disintegration of the heart and voluntary muscles, hypostatic congestion of the lungs, atrophy of the brain, and œdema of the pia mater, are common.”
Treatment.—The following remarks, bearing on this branch of the subject, are suggested for adoption by the non-medical reader, in the event of his being precluded by circumstances from calling in the aid of the medical practitioner. The most important points to be observed are the isolation of the patient and
the thorough ventilation of his apartment by the continuous admission into it of fresh air without stint or hindrance. Dr Parkes recommends the patient to be put in the top room of the house or hospital, since there is strong evidence to show that the contagious virus is volatile and ascends through the atmosphere.