The New York herald., 1874-12-01

IN any changes In the municipal offices he
might deem it to the interest of the city to
make, SO that the charter designed to extend
the term of the 'reform" heads of depart
ments beyond that of the Mayor will operate
as the instrument of their removal
Typhoid Germs and tho Germ Theory
OF Disease.
Professor Tyndall has recently made sci
entifc communication to the public, in his
usual lucid and felicitous style, which will do
him more credit than his famous Belfast
speech. Though not trained in medical sci
ence he has done it great service in bringing
to publicity the great Investigations of more
retiring scientists regarding the germ theory
Of typhoid and other diseases. The conclu-
sions arrived at are not, indeed, original, but
deserve none the less careful attention and
analysis by the medical fraternity on the
principle of great classic writer-s'he that
knows where knowledge is is next to him who
has it,
One of the earliest and most eminent in
quirers in this field, and the one chiefly fol-
lowed by Professor Tyndall, was DR.. Budd.
whose labors led him to the conviction that
there is no such thing rs the spontaneous
production of typhoid disease, and that, like
smallpox, the malady is propagated by con-
tagion. According to this view, which DR..
Tyndall processes to have vigorously ana
lyzed, using DR.. Budd's data and other
typhoid statistics typhoid fever can be orig
mated from no concourse of filth or putres-
cence. It is developed by no effiuvia, how
ever foul, from sewer or cesspool or ashpit
but can germinate only from it's own pre-
existing seed The living human body is the
soil in which this germ-poison of typhoid
fever breeds and multiplies, and its spread is
due to contagion alone. Thus in 1868 and
1859, when the Thames was in o terribly
foul condition, the stencil of which rose sto
the height of an historic event." the commu-
nifty of London, even along the river, enjoyed
singular immunity from fever, showing the
incapacity of foul matter alone to generate the
typhoid germs. Conversely, in rural districts,
where the air is purest, and in some seasons
exceptionally fine, the fatal malady has been
known to rage in the cotter's home and has
been traced exclusively along lines of personal
communication and contact with the imported
cases. Fortunately the intestinal seat of the
deadly organisms was definitely located by DR..
Budd and another equally able physician,
DR.. Klein, has, it is said, recently discovered
the very organisms themselves, which lie at
the root of all the widespread and fatal mis-
chief If DR.. Klein's experiments, now some
what in embryo, however, corroborate fully
the views of DR.. Budd, an important step has
been made toward the eradication of this, per-
haps the most morbifc agent that ever in
tested the human body.
So far Professor Tyndall's hypothesis has
had rapid but not unchallenged circulation,
and while its great value IS obvious its
incompleteness is also manifest DR.. Alfred
Carpenter, an eminent English practitioner, in
an admirable letter to the London Times,
shows that typhoid disease is contagious only
in limited degree. The bedside attendant
of the typhoid patient by scrupulous care il
seldom attacked. The rules to be followed
are "not to eat or drink in the patients room,
not to eat with unwashed hands after attend
ing the sick, and to drink only water that can.
not have been contaminated by the result ol
excretal decompositions by which the germs
bearing the granules of mischief may have
been brought into contact with it by the sewer
cases." Where such precautions are observed,
DR.. Carpenter states, the contagious power OF
the typhoid poison is rendered comparatively
harmless. But he justly repudiates the sweep.
ing and unsustained assumption of Professor
Tyndall that typhoid can originate only from
the pre-existing germs. These germs, he con-
tends, may be generated from morbid matter
exposed to certain atmospheric conditions
giving rise to typhoid, scarlatina, dysentery
and other diseases, according rs certain tel
lurc influences may or may not be present.
DE-. Carpenter ingeniously proposes to attack
the evil by first ascertaining experimentally
what are the factors necessary to its genera-
ton, and then through ventilation or other
means removing one of the factors without
which it cannot exist.
The history of typhoid and kindred epi-
denies seems to prove that they cannot,
like smallpox, be stamped out by isola-
ton; but only by ascertaining and altering
the morbifc matter itself can they be effect
ually stayed 1t is highly probable that the
empirical processes Of disinfection, drainage
and clinical purgation have effected much to