Meteorology practical and applied / by Sir John Moore.

  • Moore, John W. (John William), 1845-1937.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Meteorology practical and applied / by Sir John Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    473/538 (page 435)
    5. Typhus Fever. Typhus is essentially a disease of winter and spring—that is, of the colder seasons of the year. Among the predisposing causes of this fever, season and atmospheric temperature are commonly included. Season.—During twenty-three years January and March were the months in which the number of admissions of typhus patients to the London Fever Hospital reached a maximum—the mini- mum falling in September, August, and July. This distribution was from time to time disturbed by an epidemic, outbreaks of typhus commencing and advancing irrespective of season. An examination of the Registrar-General’s (Ireland) returns of deaths from typhus in Dublin, undertaken many years ago, led me to the conclusion that the death-rate from typhus attains its maximum in January and its minimum in September. The reason for this is not far to seek. Typhus is often intimately related to overcrowding, and affections of the respiratory organs are among its most frequent complications. Hence we should expect to meet with it especially in the colder seasons of the year. Murchison points out that typhus does not always become more prevalent with the commencement of cold weather, nor does it decline immediately on the advent of summer. He correctly infers from this that the increase of typhus in winter and spring is due not so much to the direct effect of cold as to the continued overcrowding and defective ventilation of the dwellings of the pooi- in cold weather. The accompanying table gives the facts relating to the deaths from typhus in Dublin during the thirty years 1872-1901, in- clusive (see Table XIV., p. 436). Apart from our present inquiry, one gratifying circumstance stands prominently out from the figures in the following table, and that is the fact that typhus fever is fast dying out in Dublin. The number of deaths from the disease fell nearly 50 per cent. (49-1)—to 507 from 996—in the second decennium discussed in the table, and as much as 85-2 per cent.—from 507 to 75—in the third decennium. An analysis of the table proves that tne mortality from typhus 28—2