Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-01-28
The Cost of Typhoid;
The Var ON Disease

In recent bulletin deal = with typhoid
fever the Georgia State Board of Health
presents a number of astonishing facts con-
corning the economic loss entailed by this
disease. Says the bullentin:
There are in the State of Georgia at
present approximately 2,S56,000 people.
Among these about $4,000 will most
likely become sick of typhoid fever dur
- ing life, unless some preventive meas
ures are used; and 10 per cent of those
sick, or about $4,000, will die of the
disease. Each case of typhoid fever
costs more than 500, so that the 1885,
600 now living in Georgia must pay cut
< Of their earnings more than $95,676,-
900 because of this disease. The econom-
ic loss becomes almost unbelievable if
we should add to these figures the aver
age value of each human life which is
claimed by this disease. This might
not be quite fair, since we cannot even
approximate the real worth of some of
these lives to their respective communi-
ties. With these facts in hand, no one
can be sure of escaping the ravages of
= typhoid unless he or she takes advantage
? of one or more of the preventive meas
ures which have proved eficacious:
Vaccination, fly control, sanitation
The bulletin then devotes particular at
tention to the reasons why the people should
avail themselves of the protection afforded
by typhoid vaccination-or incubation, as it
is often called.
Typhoid fever was the scourge Of all arm
les few years ago. In the Span 'sh-Ar eri-
can War the United States lost thousands of
men from typhoid epidemics. Then medical
science discovered the use of typhoid inocu-
lation, and now the disease has practically
been eliminated from the army. The per-
centage of typhoid cases in the army in the
present war, despite the vast number of men
modified, was practically negli iule.
This being the case, it would seem that the
citizen when confronted with the ravages of
typhoid and the cure for typhoid would at
once ask the question: "How can 7 get the
inoculation?'
Just this question is answered by the State
Board of Health in it's bulletin. The board
is manufacturing typhoid vaccine for free
distribution, and will gladly furnish it to all
who want it, free of charge It should be ad-
ministered by a physician and the only cost,
therefore, is the physicians usual fee for the
simple hypodermic> injection.
The time may not be distant when the law
will require all persons to be inoculated for
typhoid fever, just as practically all persons
are now required to be vaccinated for small
pox. Then a few generations of prevention
will practically eliminate typhoid fever as
disease or at least reduce it to an innocuous
state, in the same way that smallpox has
been transformed from a virulent and deadly
plague, scourging the earth at frequent in
tervals, to nothing much worse than a mild
case of measles
In the meantime the intelligent citizen
who believes in availing himself of every
possible protection against disease will not
wait to be required by law to take the
typhoid incubation. He will take it volun-
tarily, and give it to his family, and be
thankful that medical science has found the
way to stop the ravages Of one more disease
Always at work are the great explorers of
medical science, never stopping to rest on
their laurels, constantly combating deadly
diseases, ever searching for new methods of
counteracting germs that produce disease.
Today in a thousand laboratories are a host
of men assiduously engaged in a feverish
search for the germ of influenza and that
deadlier germ of pneumonia which accom-
panies influenza. Whether they find it now
or later the day is not far off when these
silent workers, fighting a battle of which the
world knows nothing until they win, will
run down the cause of the dreadful epidemic
now sweeping the world, and will announce
to humanity that never again shall influenza
scourge the earth.