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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![moves with a velocity many times greater than 1.7 centimeters per second. Especially is this true when the movement of the air within the room is influenced by drafts from windows, doors, and ventilating flues. Thus we find that there is a iDOSsibility of typhoid infection from the inhalation of the air of a room in the dust of which the spe- cific bacillus of this disease exists. Partially dried typhoid stools on the floor may be sufficiently comminuted to form an infected dust, which may float through the air, be deposited on food, find its way into uncovered receptacles of water or milk, or be directly inhaled, find lodgment in the nose and pharynx, and finally reach the intestines. While all of this is possible within a closed room, the danger of air infection with tj^phoid fever must be greatlj^ increased in military life, where food and drink are often exposed for hours to an atmos- phere laden with dust, possibly infected with the tyi:)hoid bacillus. As we shall have occasion to state later, the surface of the ground about many of the regimental encampments at Chickamauga in 1898 was so covered witli fecal matter that it was imiDOSsible to walk through those places without soiling the feet. So prevalent was typhoid fever at Chickamauga that much of this fecal matter must have contained the Eberth bacillus, and it seems hardlj^ possible that the great clouds of dust in which the men lived could have been free from this infection. The shell roads through the encampments at Jacksonville were ground by the heavy army wagons into an impal- pable dust several inches thick. Along these roads scavengers carted in half barrels fecal matter containing the typhoid bacillus. The contents of these tubs frequently splashed over and fell in this dust. On each side of these roads soldiers were encamped, and manj- mess tables were in close proximit} to the roads. Local whirlwinds some- times caught up large quantities of this dust and carried it consider- able distances. After seeing these things, we feel that we can not exclude the dust as a probable carrier of the typhoid infection, not- withstanding the fact that it would probably be a very difficult thing to scientifically demonstrate that the disease was disseminated in this wa3^ (c) The influence of the soil in the dissemination of typhoid fever. There is an old and wides]3read belief tliat many of our ills come from the soil, and man has always been inclined to attribute his mis- fortunes to localitj'. That this idea has not disappeared is shown by the fact that many of the soldiers encamped at Chickamauga in 1898 repeated the storj^that the name of the place is an Indian word mean- ing river of death, and that the locality Avas naturally an unhealthy one. Furthermore, that some of the surgeons shared in this belief in the special virulence of the locality was evidenced by the fact that they designated the continued fevers that developed among the soldiers as Chickamauga fever, and claimed that it was different in many](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21230912_0248.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
