, 1875-01-13

filth or putrescence. It is developed by
no efuvia, however foul, from sewer or
cesspool or ashpit; but can terminate only
from it's own pre-existing seed. The live
ing human body is the soil in which this
g%erm-poison of typhoid fever breeds and
multiplies, and its spread is due to conta-
gion alone. Thus in 1863 and 1859, when
the Thames was in q terribly foul condi-
ton, the stencil of which rose "to the
height of an historic event." the commu-
nifty of London, even along the river, en-
joyed a 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 excep-
tionally 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
somewhat in embryo, however, c~orroborato
fully the views of DR., Budd, an important
step has been made toward the eradication
of this, perhaps the most morbihc agent
that ever infested 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.. AL
fred Carpenter, an eminent English practi-
toner, in an admirable letter to the Lon
don Times, shows that typhoid disease is
contagious only in q limited degree. The
bedside attendant Of the typhoid patient
by scrupulous care is seldom attacked.
The rules to be followed are "not to eat
or drink in the patients room, not to eat
with unwashed hands after attending the
sick, and to drink only water that cannot
have been contaminated by the result of
e~xcretal decompositions by which the
germs bearing the granules of mischief
may have been brought into contact with
it by the sewer gases" Where such pre-
cautions are observed, DR.. Carpenter
states, the contagious power of the ty-
phoid poison is rendered comparatively
harmless. But he justly repudiates the
sweeping and unsustained assumption of
Professor Tyndall that typhoid can origi-
nate only from the pre-, existing germs.
These germs, he contends, may be general
ed from morbid matter exposed to certain
atmospheric conditions giving rise to
typhoid, scarlatina, dysentery and other
diseases, according as certain t%elluric inAu-
ences may or may not be present. DR..
Carpenter ingeniously proposes to attack
the evil by first ascertaining experimental
ly what are the factors necessary to its
generation, 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 morbific matter itself can thew he
~eHectually stayed. 1t is highly probable
that the empirical processes of distinction.
drainage and clinical purgation have effect,
ed much to mitigate the horrors of this
pestilence. But it is very humiliating, as
DIR. Budd suggests, that issues so vast and
vital should be contingent upon the powers
of an organism $50 low in the scale of
being that the mildew which springs on
the decaying wood must be considered
high in comparison" The investigation
0f this subiect 10 of crob