4 The Modern Theory and Practice of Physics, by Browne Langrish, p. 354, London, 1764.
5 Observations in Diseases of the Army, London.
6 Quoted by Murchison.
Epidemics of typhus fever have frequently occurred in various parts of Europe during the present century, although they have, on the whole, shown a greater tendency than before to confine themselves to the place in which they first appeared. The most severe of these began in 1846, and after committing great ravages in Ireland extended to England, and subsequently to the Continent. The disease proved much more fatal than the sword in the armies of Napoleon in the towns besieged by him in the early part of this century, and was the cause of an immense loss of life in the Russian and French armies in the Crimea after the fall of Sebastopol.
In our own country typhus fever has appeared several times during the present century, but the outbreaks have rarely attained the magnitude of epidemics, such as are seen in Europe, and have usually been distinctly traceable to importation from abroad. It was first met with, according to Wood,7 in New England in 1807 and in Philadelphia in 1812, continuing to lurk, this author says, in the lanes and alleys of that city until the winter of 1820-21, when, as a student of medicine, he had an opportunity of studying it. Another outbreak of the disease occurred in the same city in 1836, and is the subject of an admirable paper by the late Wm. S. Gerhard.8 Since then epidemics of moderate severity have repeatedly occurred at different times in several of the American cities, and have been described, among others, by Flint, Da Costa,9 and Loomis. A large number of cases of typhus fever (1723), with 572 deaths, were reported to the Surgeon-General's office during the late Civil War, but doubt has been thrown upon the correctness of the diagnosis of many of these cases by Clymer10 and Woodward,11 and by other army surgeons, who, as the result of their investigations of this subject, have reached the conclusion that typhus did not prevail as an epidemic, however limited, among our soldiers at dépôts for returned prisoners of war. A like immunity from this scourge may be assumed to have been enjoyed by the Confederate forces, since Joseph Jones,12 one of the most eminent of their medical officers, has stated positively that no case of true typhus fever came under his observation during the war in any army, in any field hospital, general hospital, or military prison, and that the experience of all of his associates whose opinions on this question he was able to obtain, either personally or by letter, was the same. It is therefore most probable that the cases entered upon the sick reports of both armies as typhus fever were in almost every case, if not in all, cases of typhoid fever occurring in scorbutic subjects.
7 A Treatise on the Practice of Medicine, by George B. Wood, M.D., etc., Philada., 1855.
8 The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, February and August, 1837.
9 Ibid., January, 1866.
10 The Science and Practice of Medicine, by William Aitken, M.D., Edin.; 3d Amer. ed., p. 462, Philadelphia, 1872.
11 Camp Diseases of the United States Armies, by Joseph Janvier Woodward, M.D., Philadelphia, 1863.