The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-28
THE PRESENT STATUS OF
 ANTITYPHOID VACCINATION,

The last report of the Surgeon-Gen eral of the Army adds evidence to the already overwhelming testimony in favor of the protective value of antityphoid vaccination. The figures given for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1909, showed an incidence of ty- phoid fever sixteen times greater among the unvaccinated than among the vaccinated troops. Up to oct. l, 1910, only five cases had developed among the immunized, as against AIS among the non-immunized Moreover, as to leave doubt as to the diagnosis and there were no bad effects of any kind as a result of the vaccination.
 The practicce was introduced into our army in March 1909 and although the taking of the treatment is en- tirely voluntary, over 1000 officers and enlisted men had availed them selves of the opportunity to become immuniZed before the present mobili- zation of troops on the Mexican bor- der. Since that time the evidence concerning the procedure has been increasingly favorable. With the memory of Camp Chickamauga still fresh in our minds we are the better able to appreciate the great strides which have been made in preventive medicine since the days of the Spanish war. During that campaign there were 20,73S cases of typhoid with 1880 deaths, and all within three and a half months. One man in every six had the disease and this was increas- ed to one in every five among those regiments which were left In the Uni men who have been mobilized on the southwest border for over two months. living under the usual camp condi- tions where rain and mud prevail, the only case of typhoid fever which has developed has been that of a single teamster who was unprotected by vaccination. The results of vaccina- tion practiced in the Army Q200o cases up to Oct. 1, 1910) have been more fully described in The Journal by various army officers.
 Like most medical discoveries, the final perfection of the practice of an- tityphoid vaccination has resulted only after years of experimentation and apparent failures. To Prof. A. E. Wright of the British Army Med ical school at Netley is due the honor of having first conceived and put in practice the idea of antityphoid vac- cination. This was before the Boer war. The results were rather unsatis- factory in South Africa during that campaign and 1t was only after fur the experimentation that the technic was finally perfected. One of the chief trouble had been in the fact that it had not yet been fully demon- strated that the best results were to be obtained only after the repetition of the process three times at inter vals of ten days. The German army a result the medical officials succeed ed in cutting the typhoid fever rate in half by vaccination of portion of the troops in Southwestern Africa in the campaign against the Hereros in 1904 and 1907. By this time the Eng fish were beginning to get better re- suits and in India in 1908 among 12,000 soldiers stationed there, 5000 were vaccinated, and 5000 under similar conditions were left unvaccinated and maintained as controls. They found that seven times as many of the con- trols contracted typhoid and eleven times as many died of it.
 The trial has now been made long enough and with such uniformly good results that it is time the procedure should be seriously considered in civ il life. A step has already been talk en in this direction by the Public Health and Marine Hospital service According to instructions recently is sued officers are required to prac- tice antityphoid vaccination on all beneficiaries of the service who may desire it. Speaking in general terms these benefciaries include all seamen or persons employed in any capacity on any licensed vessel of the United States except enlisted men in the Army and Navy. Sailors on both in- land waters and the high seas are, from the rowing nature of their call- ing, especially liable to exposure to typhoid infection. Thus they fre- ouently become carriers of the disease and a menace to the general public
 fan ntc tion of the Public Health and Marine Hospital service should be regarded as a measure directly calculated to preserve the public health. It would seem as though the next logical move would be to place the antityphoid vaccine at the disposal of the civilian ora ractitioner, as has been done already with the vaccine for the treatment of rabies-Journal of the American Med- ical Association, June A.