In one more campaign the immediate future seems likely to yield
great results perhaps almost as important as those resulting from
the discovery of antitoxin. This will be from the use of the new
anti-typhoid serum, which the Department of Health in December, 1912,
decided to use as extensively as possible in New York. This decision
followed close on the War Department’s public declaration that the
anti-typhoid serum had proved a success, virtually eliminating the
disease from the army. In 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in
the United States than of the plague in India, despite the fact that
India’s population is two and a half times that of the United States.
In 1907 there were more cases of typhoid in New York than of pellagra
in Italy, though Italy’s population is six times that of New York. In
this work, as in children’s diseases and in tuberculosis, New York
is a pioneer, and yet New York is better off regarding typhoid than
many other American cities, for it has a lower typhoid death-rate
than Boston, Chicago, Washington, or Philadelphia; yet its typhoid
death-rate is higher than that of London, Paris, Berlin, or Hamburg.
Last spring when Wilbur Wright, the aviator, died of typhoid fever at
the age of forty-five, several newspapers were honest enough to speak
of it as a murder--a murder by the American people, through neglect and
ignorance, of a genius who, had he been allowed, might have lived to be
of still more distinguished service to the world.
In the last two years the New York Department of Health has been able
to trace definitely several typhoid-fever outbreaks. In nearly every
instance it was found that the disease could be traced to a “carrier.”
A carrier is a person who has recovered from an attack of typhoid, but
who remains infected. One outbreak of four hundred cases was traced to
the infection of a milk-supply by a typhoid carrier who had had the
disease forty-seven years before. In another outbreak of fifty cases
the contamination was traced to a man who had the disease seven years
before.
Within the last few months the case of “Typhoid Mary” has received much
attention. This woman has recently brought suit against the Department
of Health for damaging her career as a cook. For more than six months
she was kept in a sort of exile by the department. Before that time she
had been a cook in many households, and wherever she went typhoid fever
followed her. Although she had suffered with the disease many years
before she was apprehended, the germs were said to be still very lively
in her system. The authorities asserted that her blood tests revealed
that she was likely to communicate typhoid to any one at any time; and
therefore Mary did no more cooking.
There is no telling how many carriers are loose in New York at
present, and the only known way of averting the danger is by the use
of the serum which the army has found efficacious. It is estimated
that about three per cent. of those recovering from typhoid become
bacillus-carriers. As yet typhoid vaccination is not compulsory among
the public at large, as in the army; but a strong movement is felt
in the city to make it so. When typhoid-fever becomes as thoroughly
controlled as smallpox, or even as diphtheria, the death-rate will drop
another point or two. It will be the last of the filth diseases to go.
It is asserted by competent authorities that eighty-five per cent. of
the cases are preventable.