The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-21 00:00:00

(From the Lancet.)

It was during divine service on Sunday last that the
majority of the people of this land first heard the sad in-
telligence of the death ot the Prince Consort. It came as a
heavy and sudden blow; for although much anxiety had
been felt for some days previously by those who feared his
power of bearing up against so depressing a disease, yet even
the least sanguine had no anticipations of the slowly but
surely decreasing debility—resisting all efforts to stay its
advance—under which the Prince gradually sank, dying at
last from pulmonary engorgement.
The disease was typhoid fever, not very severe in its early
symptoms, but, from its very nature, taxing heavily the re-
sieant vital powers and energies of the sufferer—that re-
serve force of which the physician so carefully takes stock
in every case of fever; for he knows not how soon it may

be tried to the uttermost, or all his efforts be unavailing to
keep the fortress of life.
The insiduous character of this disease is always opposed
to any early and decisive diagnosis of its precise character.
Moreover, its first symptoms are common to various mild
forms of febrile disorder. It should not, however, beomitted
to note that typhoid fever, although less to be dreaded than
typhus fever, inasmuch as it is not considered to be commu-
nicable from one member of a household to another by con-
tagion, is nevertheless, in respect to mortality, equally for-
midable. The death-rates of those attacked by typhoid and
typhus fever are nearly equal, both being of a very fatal
character. If the disease by which the Prince Consort fell
was by no means of that ambiguous and usually innocent
character which popular report has assigned to it, no doubt
from misinterpretation of the necessary official reticence of
the early bulletins, so also it should be observed that the
illness was of longer duration than at first appeared. The
Prince Consort had been attacked at least a fortnight be-
fore th 3 fatal termination. On Sunday week he was un-
able to attend divine service—a duty he ever held as of pa-
ramount importance in his well balanced mind. On the
Monday following Dr. Jenner was summoned, and from
that time the Prince was under continuous medical advice.
It is perhaps commonly thought that, as a man of middle
age, well nourished, and of course highly cared for in all
material wants, the Prince might have been less than
usually liable to fall a victim to low fever of this kind. But

the opposite series of relations may always be predicted in
typhoid fever. This is a disease which has invariably
proved far more fatal to sufferers of the upper class and of
middle period of life than to patients of the poorer kind.
The unhappy issue must therefore be regarded as a source
of deep lamentation rather than of surprise. There is no-
thing in the known course of the disease during the last week
of the attack to take it out of the ordinary character of ty-
phoid fever. The immediate cause of death is believed to
have been congestion of the lungs, as above stated. This
congestion was of course hypostatic, or gravitative, and
such as occurs in the last stages of weakness of the circula-
tion. On the other hand, there was enough of suddenness
in the immediate termination of the disease to raise the
queAion whether it might not have been due to ulcerative
perforation of the bowel—a well-known complication of ty-
phoid fever. But we are unaware of any facts which suffi •
ciently uphold this belief.
The melancholy occurrence must induce the profession to
revert to the former epidemic of typhoid fever which raged
severely in Windsor two years since. That attack was
traced by Dr. Murchison very clearly and distinctly to bad
drainage as its cause. The question has been asked whe-
ther the Castle itself is as badly drained as the town, and
whether there be anything in the drainage of Windsor
Castle which could be expected to favour the growth or
dissemination of the disease. It must be remembered that
this is one o' those zymotic ailments essentially connected
in their origin with local defects of sanitary arrangements.
So close is the connection between bad drainage and typhoid
fever that Dr. Murchison has, with the assent of Dr. W.
Farr, denominated it pythogenic fever, or fever generated
by dirt. In the case of the epidemic of Windsor two years
since this was very observable. A plan of the drainage of
the Castle and town, given by Dr. Murchison in his valu-
able description of the cause of the epidemic, shows, how-
ever, that the Royal residence is directly and perfectly
drained into the Thames. It deserves, perhaps, to be
mentioned, also, that this good drainage is peculiar to the
Castle, only one half of the Royal mews participating in its
benefits. These two blocks of buildings are separated merely
by a roadway, and, while that half which has the benefit of
the Castle drainage remained free from fever, in the other
ill-drained block there occurred 30 oases of fever and three
deaths among the Royal servants.