posed to concentrated exhalations from excrementitious matter are peculiarly liable to typhoid fever.
The haunts of cholera and typhoid fever are identical. In other respects, which we cannot now enlarge upon, the two pestilences are closely related to each other. In the meantime, the point to be remembered is, that when we dislodge one we dislodge both.
Passing over minor characteristics, we may at once mention that the diagnostic symptom of typhoid fever is an elevated rose-coloured rash, occurring about the seventh day in patches of papules, which lose their colour when pressed. In fatal cases, certain glands of the intestinal surface are found, on examination after death, to be in an ulcerated state. Neither the elevated rosy rash disappearing on pressure nor the ulcerated intestine are ever met with in cases of typhus. The importance of these medical facts as guides to the employment of the proper measures of preventive sanitary police must have already suggested themselves to the reader. A single case of typhoid fever ought always to be at once attended to, as a call to test with care the state of sewers and stink-traps, and to remove all reeking cesspools and such like nuisances from the vicinity of dwellings.
3. Relapsing Fever has sometimes manifested great severity as an epidemic. During a portion of the duration of the celebrated epidemic of 1843 (as appears from Dr. Cormack’s description) it was a very severe fever in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and other towns. Speaking generally, however, relapsing fever is much less serious than either typhus or typhoid, provided the patients are adequately clothed and fed during the whole period of convalescence. When there is neglect in these particulars, many perish from dropsy and other secondary affections, after passing well through the fever.
Relapsing fever possesses great social importance, from its relation to, or we may say its actual dependence upon destitution. It is the “famine fever,” just as typhus is the “filth fever” and typhoid the “sewage fever.” At the commencement of an epidemic all, and during its continuance nearly all, its victims, are among the destitute and imperfectly nourished. Like typhus, and unlike typhoid fever, it is contagious under certain conditions. It does not spread readily by slight and casual contact with the infected, but is freely communicated when the contact with or contiguity to the sick is prolonged and takes place in confined rooms. Relapsing fever sets in abruptly and violently. The pyrexial condition continues for a few days; it then ceases for a day or several days; and afterwards returns once or oftener. Hence the name of “relapsing fever,” by which it is now generally designated.
The practical conclusions to be drawn from the above statements are apparent. Use all possible means to prevent people crowding together in filthy ill-aired houses, and so prevent typhus; give protection from sewage gases, and so prevent typhoid fever; and lastly, in times of scarcity and destitution, give timely succour, and so prevent the poor from falling under the relapsing fever. The thorough application of these preventives requires a better system of sanitary police than we possess, and a higher grade of officers to carry out the administrative details. The supervision of dwellings must be made stringent and general, in respect of number of occupants, ventilation, cleanliness, and sewage gases. In respect of all of these conditions, authoritative and intelligent supervision is required, but particularly in respect of house and town drainage. Sewers may be good; but if they are ventilated into the houses, in place of external to them, they become the most pestiferous agencies which can be imagined. Moreover, all drains are liable to go wrong, and all of them, therefore, require frequent inspection by experienced persons. Unfortunately, the inspectors of nuisances appointed by the rate-payers are very often not competent. They are generally tradesmen who have failed or are failing in business, who by favour of some parochial coterie manage to be placed in office. The Privy Council, by the Public Health Act of 1858, have power to issue regulations for securing the due qualification of public vaccinators. Why should they not have a similar control over the appointment of officers of health and inspectors of nuisances?
KINDLING THE NEED FIRE.[1]
Inquiries having been made as to the method employed to kindle the Need Fire (not the bonfires on St. John’s Eve, as one inquirer supposes), I have only to direct attention to the practice of producing fire by the friction of wood which is common among all uncivilised tribes. The Red Indian, the black African, and the brown Mongolian, all use the same method till they become acquainted with tinder-boxes or lucifer matches. By what I remember of the loss of time over the tinder-box, before lucifers were invented, I should imagine the savage method is superior. I have witnessed the process in wild countries, but not in our own,—in the case of the Need Fire or otherwise. It is to be supposed, however, that the best method is used in Cumberland, as in California or the Kobi desert.
The woman makes the fire in savage life. She collects a handful of dry leaves, or wisps of dry grass; also twigs of various sizes up to that which will maintain a fire. She then places herself with her back to the wind, with a sharpened stick in one hand, and a bit of wood with a hole in it in the other. Any kind of wood will do, if it be but dry. She steadies the larger piece with her foot or knee, and twirls the other with its sharpened end in the hole,—as we twirl a chocolate mill,—as fast as it will go, and without stopping for an instant. Smoke comes in three or four minutes, if not sooner; and then a spark. This is the critical moment; and the art is so to apply dry grass, or leaves, or a splinter of touchwood as to catch. It is a pretty sight to see how skilfully the sparks are cherished,—how they run through the grass, and how a gentle breath in the nick of time produces flame, and how the flame is fed and coaxed, till the fire which was covered by- ↑ See No. 50, page 566.
