+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | #To Our Readers.# | | | | Readers who appreciate the independence and all-round | | advocacy of _The Healthy Life_ can materially assist the | | extension of its circulation by tactfully urging their local | | newsagent to have the magazine regularly displayed for sale. | | An attractive monthly poster can always be had free from the | | Publishers, 3 Tudor Street, London, E.C. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ MODERN GERM MANIA: A CASE IN POINT. Under the sensational heading, _Doomed to Carry Germs: Woman Typhoid Victim for Life_, the following account appeared recently in _News of the World_:-- Almost unique in medical history is the case of a woman typhoid carrier, who, it is said, will carry the bacilli with her through life. The case is described by Dr Barbara Cunningham in a report of the Manchester Medical Officer of Health. In order that the woman shall cease to be a source of danger--as she has been keeping lodgers--the health authorities are giving her 7s. a week, and that, with her old-age pension of 5s., will be sufficient to keep her without lodgers. The case has aroused much interest in Manchester. The principal restrictions on the part of the Health Department are that she must not cook or wash for anyone. Anyone can, however, cook for her. In discussing the case Dr Martin, who for 25 years was Medical Officer of Health for Gorton, remarked that in some cases of typhoid carriers the infection ceased to exist for a time, but it was unusual for it to exist year after year. "The reason for the woman referred to carrying the typhoid bacilli with her through life is," he added, "because of a peculiarity of constitution. There is no remedy to be found for it at present, and no means of freeing her from the germs, hence the reward offered by an American to anyone who can find a remedy for such cases. The germs themselves are proof against remedies, and they go on multiplying. The woman is incurable, and you cannot kill the germs without killing the woman. It is the first case, to my knowledge, where the health authorities have taken such measures to prevent a spread of the infection." The history of the affair is interesting. The woman's case had been reported to the authorities, and when her lodger became ill with typhus she was suspected, and was found to be giving off large numbers of typhoid bacilli. She was placed in Monsall Hospital for two months, during which time she was treated with gradually increasing doses of vaccine prepared in