What is the habitat of our organism, and is it increasing its spread?
Its habitat is the entire civilized world, and it goes wherever
civilization goes. In this sense its spread is increasing, but, in every
other, we have good ground for believing that it is on the wane.
Positive assurance, either one way or the other, is, of course,
impossible, simply for the reason that the disease was not recognized
until such a short time ago that no statistics of any real value for
comparison are available; and, secondly, because even to-day, on account
of its insidious character and the astonishing variety of its forms, and
degrees of mildness and virulence, a considerable percentage of cases
are yet unrecognized and unreported.
It might be mentioned in passing that this statement applies to the
alleged increase of nearly all diseases which are popularly believed to
be modern inventions, like appendicitis, insanity, and cancer. We have
no statistics more than thirty years old which are of real value for
purposes of comparison.
However, when it comes to the number of deaths from the disease, there
is a striking and gratifying diminution for twenty years past, which is
increasing in ratio instead of diminishing. That we are really getting
control of typhoid is shown by the, at first sight, singular and
decidedly unexpected fact that it is no longer a disease of cities, but
of the country. The death-rate per thousand living in the cities of the
United States is lower than in the rural districts. For instance, the
mortality in the State of Maryland, outside of Baltimore, is two and
one-half times as great as that in the city itself. Our period of
greatest outbreak in the large cities is now the month of September,
when city dwellers have just returned from their vacations in the pure
and healthful country, bringing the bacilli in their systems.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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