p. 11 | Typhoid Fever

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 18, 1906

Typhoid Fever

WATER is the usual vehicle for typhoid germs, as is well known, and probably all great outbreaks of the disease in cities are due to an infected water-supply. But a city with an ideal water-supply may be scourged with typhoid fever, although less severely, through the medium of impure ice, and it is almost as important to know where the ice is cut, or with what water it is made, if artificial, as where the city water comes from. Not long ago a number of officers on one of the United States ships in the Mediterranean squadron were taken down with typhoid fever. When the source of the infection was traced, it was found to be some ice bought at Athens, the ice-machine on shipboard having broken down.

Raw vegetables used for salads may have been grown in soil contaminated with slops used as fertilizers, or may have been washed in infected water.

Unless a water-supply is above suspicion, all that used for drinking, tooth-cleaning, and in the kitchen should be boiled, and the drinking water cooled by putting vessels containing it on the ice, not by putting ice in the water itself.

Finally great care should be taken to screen all food from flies, for if there is a case of typhoid fever in the neighborhood, flies may become most active distributors of the poison.— Selected.