Abstract of report on the origin and spread of typhoid fever in U.S. military camps during the Spanish war of 1898 / by Walter Reed ... Victor C. Vaughan ... and Edward O. Shakespeare.
- Surgeon General of the United States Army
- Date:
- 1900
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Abstract of report on the origin and spread of typhoid fever in U.S. military camps during the Spanish war of 1898 / by Walter Reed ... Victor C. Vaughan ... and Edward O. Shakespeare. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![it forms the first link in the chain of evidence necessary to tlie dem- onstration of this relationship. Certainly if the bacillus were not present in all cases it could not be the cause of the disease, and from what we know of other infectious maladies, the constant presence of this germ in typhoid fever is strong presumptive, but not conclusive, evidence that it is the cause of the disease. The fact that the Eberth bacillus is toxicogenic is corroborative evidence of its causal relationship to typhoid fever. If the germ were not poisonous it could not cause the disease. Putting together the facts, (1) the germ is found in the body in all cases of typhoid fever, (2) it is not found in the body except in typhoid fever, (3) it produces poisons, the e^^ddence that the Eberth bacillus is the cause of typhoid fever falls but little short of being conclusive. However, it must be admitted that there still remains some ground for argument. For instance, it might be said that the elaboration of chemical poisons bj' a given micro-organism in artificial culture media is no proof that the same substances are produced when the micro-organism multiplies in the human body. On this point, also, experimental evidence seems to be incapable of bringing us to an unquestionable conclusion. Granting that the Eberth bacillus forms the same poison or poisons in the animal body that it does in artificial culture media, it remains a difficult task to demonstrate that the products of its growth are the specific poisons of typhoid fever. In the first place, it can hardly be expected that the sj'mptoms resulting from the relatively slow but long-continued elaboration of a ]3oison within the body can be identi- cal with those following the sudden introduction of a relatively large amount of the same poison into a healthy animal. In the second place, it is a well-known fact that many poisons vary quite markedly in their effects upon different species of animals. For these reasons it would not be a matter of surprise if we possessed beyond question the specific poison or poisons of tj'phoid fever to find that these would fail to induce in the lower animals a clinical picture of the symptoms of typhoid fever as it is seen in man. Therefore, it follows that, although neither the bacillus nor its chemical products produce in the lower animals the symptoms characteristic of tyj)hoid fever in man, this micro-organism may still be the specific germ and its prod- ucts the specific poisons of typhoid fever. It may be of interest to make a brief statement concerning our present knowledge of the poisonous products of the Eberth bacillus. In 1885 Brieger obtained from pure cultures of this germ a poisonous base which induces in guinea pigs an increased flow of saliva, fre- quency of respiration, dilatation of the pupils, profuse diarrhea, mus- cular pai-alysis, and death within from tAventj'-four to forty-eight hours. Post-mortem examination of these animals shows the heart to be in systole, the lungs liypera^raic, and the intestines contracted and pale. This basic substance was at first believed to be the specific](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21230912_0225.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
