The etiology of typhoid fever and its prevention : being the Milroy lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in 1902 / by W.H. Corfield.

  • Corfield, W. H. (William Henry), 1843-1903.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The etiology of typhoid fever and its prevention : being the Milroy lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in 1902 / by W.H. Corfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    change of water, with some apparent success. ” There was, however, it will be noticed, no attempt to prove that the poison of typhoid fever had in any way obtained access to the water, it being then sufficient to prove that the water was contaminated with sewage. In the tenth report of the medical officer of the Privy Council (1867) is a report by Dr. Buchanan on an outbreak of typhoid fever at Guildford, of which Sir John Simon says that the epidemic of typhoid fever at Guildford was peculiarly instructive and adds: “The distribution of the disease, especially during the first fortnight of the epidemic, so nearly corresponded in area with a particular section of the public water-supply of the town as to raise the strongest suspicions that this section of the water-supply was at fault. And eventually these suspicions became a certainty. First, namely, it was shown that on one particular day in August (about 10 days before the beginning of the outbreak) 330 of the 1675 houses of Guildford had exceptionally received their water from a certain high-service reservoir which had been previously filled from a new well and that the persons residing in or frequenting these 330 houses constituted the part of the population on which the epidemic influence had almost exclusively fallen. Subsequent chemical examination of the water of the new well detected in it the products of organic decomposition and examination of the local circumstances showed but too unquestionably whence the decomposing organic matter had been derived. The new well, no one could doubt, was most dangerously situated : in the poi'ous and fissured chalk stratum, it was within 10 feet . of various sewers, one of which, indeed, was traversed as a short cut by the iron delivery pipe of the high service. And when after the epidemic this reckless confusion of sewer and waterworks was dissected the state of things found at the spot was reported to us in the following terms by Mr. Taylor, one of the Poor-law medical officers of the town : ‘ The engineers employed in the repairs of the steam-engine noticed some exudation on the wall of the engine-house next the valley where the sewer runs, and the pit of the fly-wheel con- tained a notable quantity of the same. As the exudation had the smell of sewage the ground was opened in the valley at a point adjacent to the engine-house. The sewer was found leaking in various places and the soil between it and the wall of the engine-house was saturated with sewage, of which as much appeared to run outside as inside the sewer. This was found to be an old-fashioned 12-inch drain constructed with red, unglazed gutter tiles, with butt joints and common mortar. The tiles forming the lower half of the cylinder were in places completely worn away and at one point several feet of them were missing and the upper tiles had fallen in upon the soil below. All the joints gave exit to water and the ground was a quagmire of filth beneath and on each side. Dark-coloured foetid slush had to be dug out and removed in baskets, making the men vomit who were employed in the