Typhus Fever

Typhus Fever, an infectious malady, the chief symptoms of which are fever and a characteristic eruption, which appears about the fifth day from the commencement of the illness. The period of incubation varies between five or six days and a fortnight. The disease is ushered in with the ordinary symptoms of fever, the attack being often quite sudden; the temperature is considerably elevated from the first, and attains its maximum at the end of five or six days. It remains high for a few days, and subsides by crisis about the thirteenth or fourteenth day in cases which recover. The rash consists of what is called a subcutaneous mottling and of dusky red pots, and presents some resemblance to the eruption of measles. It is developed usually on the fourth or fifth day, and the severity of the disease bears generally some relation to the abundance of the rash. The nervous symptoms of typhus fever are usually prominent. There is at first headache, then some tendency to delirium, and at the end of the first week the patient is markedly delirious. In fatal cases death is ushered in by coma, and sometimes by convulsions. The mortalty is about 15 per cent., and is not very different from that of typhoid fever, though it should be noted that the prospect of recover in typhus is very much less in the case of old than of young patients, a contrast which does not hold good in typhoid. The disease, which is now of rare occurrence in this country, was at one time widely prevalent. Epidemics occurred from time to time, particularly in association with overcrowding and distress, such as were met with in the unhealthy areas of towns, in prisons, and in camps. it has been especially fatal in Ireland. In recent years in this country Its effects have only been manifested by the occurrence of small groups of cases in large centres of population, particularly in certain seaport towns.