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Prevention of Communicable Disease: Anti-typhoid

Anti-typhoid vaccination should always be done by a competent physician. The infection often gives rise to slight fever and some painful local and general symptoms. These disappear in from 24 to 48 hours. It may also result in temporarily weakening the power to resist infection. Hence preventive vaccination should be undertaken before the usual time that epidemics appear. Persons vaccinated should take the strictest precautions to avoid the chance of typhoid infection by carefully boiling all water that is drunk and cleansing the food that is eaten and by rigorous personal hygiene and cleanliness. These precautions need only be taken during a period of two or three weeks at most. No one should be vaccinated who has been exposed to typhoid fever or during the beginning of an attack. In such cases vaccination may aggravate the disease. It should be practiced only upon perfectly healthy subjects, free from all organic or other defects and from local or general ailments no matter what their nature, especially tuberculosis. The vaccination of debilitated or delicate persons should be avoided. Anti-typhoid vaccination is especially recommended for physicians, internes, medical students, male and female nurses in hospitals; persons, members of families in which bacillus carriers have been found; and the population of localities where the disease is frequent, especially young persons of both sexes who have recently come to such localities from more salubrious regions.

PREVENTION OF COMMUNICABLE DISEASE 159 MALARIA This is a germ disease produced by a parasite belonging to the very lowest order of animal life. It attacks and destroys the red cells of the blood. It also produces a toxin or poison that causes the characteristic symptoms of the disease. Symptoms. - The most common and well-recognized symptoms occur in the cases known as malarial or intermittent fever, fever and ague, or chills and fever. Chilly sensations occur at intervals for several days together with a feeling of fullness in the head and general bodily depression. Then come chills followed by a high fever, with subsequent profuse perspiration. After a few hours the patient returns to a normal condition and feels about as usual until the next attack occurs.

The paroxysms of chills and fever occur at various intervals depending upon the particular parasite which produces them. A common form is that which produces a chill every other day. Or there may be a continuous slow fever, or attacks of fever at irregular intervals. severe cases the brain becomes affected and the malady often terminates in chronic Bright's disease.

In Treatment. - Home doctoring is often thought sufficient for malaria, quinine usually being considered a specific. But the constitutional effects of this disease are so serious that a physician should be consulted and his recommendations implicitly followed.