THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE. 103

Typhus Fever.
The conditions essential to
the propagation of the typhus
poison are over-crowding and
exclusion of fresh air.
Characteristic symptoms are,
a dusky, mulberry - coloured
eruption, appearing from the
fifth to the eighth day, and
remaining persistent for about
twelve days, the general hue
of the skin being at the same
time dusky and muddy. Slug-
gishness and confusion of the
intellect, extreme bodily weak-
ness, delirium passing into
stupor, somnolence and pro-
found prostration.
No characteristic appearance
after death.

It has been repeatedly shown by Mr. Simon and
other pathologists, that intestinal or typhoid fever is
essentially a "filth disease," or "disease of unclean-
ness."

Wherever fæcal matters are allowed to accu-
mulate, a nidus is created for the nourishment and
development, if not for the generation, of the specific
virus which gives rise to this fever. It cannot,
therefore be wondered at that intestinal fever, which
appears always to have been endemic at Terling,
should, under the conditions which presented them-
selves towards the close of 1867, have burst forth
into an epidemic of extraordinary violence.

These conditions, and the whole of the circum-
stances connected with the outbreak, are fully
described in Dr. R. T. Thorne's Report, dated 25th
January, 1868.

Happily the disease has now ceased to spread, and
it is a question of interest and importance whether
the disappearance of the fever is in any degree due
to the extensive out-of-door use of carbolic acid.

Out of a population of 900 persons, about 300
have been attacked with intestinal fever since the
4th December, and of this number 41 have died.

With the exception of a lull of a few days in the
third week of February, fresh cases continued to
occur almost daily up to the end of last month, while
only two persons have been attacked since the 1st
instant.

The carbolic acid was first extensively used, as
already stated, on the 17th February, and allowing
ten days for the expiration of the period of incuba-
tion, or period of latency, there can be no question
that the subsidence of the epidemic corresponds in
point of time with the date at which the purifying
influence of carbolic acid might antecedently have
been expected to become manifest.

That incredible quantities of fæcal matters had
accumulated in uncovered cesspools, open ditches,
&c., and had soaked into the soil, admits of no
doubt; and there can be as little doubt that the
decomposition, or, in the language of chemists, the
putrefactive fermentation of these matters, was the
essential cause of the fever.

The special and characteristic chemical property
of carbolic acid is the peculiar power which it
possesses of arresting putrefactive changes, and it
therefore appears to me reasonable to conclude that
the extensive use of carbolic acid and the simultane-
ous disappearance of the disease are facts which hold
the relation of cause and effect.

It will not, I believe, be disputed that our know-
ledge of the causation of fever points to carbolic
acid as being the most powerful agent which can be
used for the destruction of that specific poison,
which, being absorbed into the human organism, sets

Intestinal or Typhoid Fever.
The conditions essential to
the propagation of the poison
of intestinal fever are the de-
fective removal and putrefac-
tive fermentation of excreta.
Characteristic symptoms are,
an eruption of rose-coloured
spots, appearing about the
twelfth day, followed by suc-
cessive crops of spots, each
crop lasting about three days,
fierce thirst, tenderness and
tympanitic fullness of the ab-
domen, vivacity passing into
delirious excitement. Pale
yellow diarrhœal discharges,
and hæmorrhage from the
bowels.
Characteristic appearances
after death are certain altera-
tions in the glands of the in-
testines.

up the succession of phenomena known as typhoid
fever, and it is to be regretted, therefore, that it was
not brought into use at an earlier stage of the
epidemic.

But however powerful may have been the action
of carbolic acid at Terling, its use as a disinfectant
can only be looked upon as a temporary expedient
for holding pestilence in check until the contemplated
and much needed sanitary improvements have been
carried into effect.

I have, &c.,
Colonel Henderson.
R. M. GOVER.

(Enclosure No. 2.)
EXTRACT from a Despatch of Governor Sir H. Barkly
to the Duke of Buckingham, dated Mauritius,
September 16th, 1868.

"Referring to previous correspondence on the
subject, I have the honor to transmit a report from
the Acting General Sanitary Inspector on the results
of the experiments made with the carbolic acid sent
to this Colony by your Grace's directions, both as a
disinfectant and in the direct treatment of the
epidemic.

"2. In the former respect, Dr. Barraut considers
that it fully bears out the encomiums passed on it in
England; and though he gives no particulars of the
way in which he has applied it, and I believe, indeed,
has postponed using it extensively and continuously
till the hot weather returns, I happen to know that
a trial made by him to disinfect the Stanley Cut was
very successful.

"3. As a medicine, he declares that diluted
draughts of the purer preparation acted almost like
magic in checking the paroxysms of the fever; whilst
Dr. Tessier, who seems to have confined his trials of
it at Plaine Magnien to injecting this medicinal acid
under the skin, gives in an enclosure to Dr. Barraut's
report a wonderful account of the efficaciousness of
that system in no less than sixteen cases of inter-
mittent type.

"4. There can be but little doubt that when the
success of these experiments becomes more generally
known, the use of carbolic acid in all ways will
become more extensive.

"5. I have suggested to the Mayor of Port Louis,
that it should be not only plentifully employed in
the purifying of the drains preparatory to the return
of the unhealthy season, but that it should be used
regularly to water the streets."

(Sub-Enclosure to Enclosure No. 2.)
General Board of Health Office,
September 14, 1868.

SIR, -In obedience to instructions received, I have
the honor to report, for the information of His
Excellency the Governor, that I sent out circulars to
the medical officers in charge of the dispensaries of
the General Board, soliciting their co-operation in
the trial of carbolic acid as a disinfectant, and also as
a therapeutical agent in the treatment of intermittent
fever.

The replies I received were not entirely satis-
factory, as few seemed willing to try an agent which,
by their admission, was quite new to them, and
possessed of poisonous properties.

Dr. Tessier, at Plaine Magnien, was the only
one who set to work with a zeal which deserves
my best acknowledgments, and I beg to forward a
paper, written at my request, detailing a series
of experiments conducted entirely by him, which
open a new line of treatment for intermittent fever,
and which constitute quite an epoch in the medical
history of this country, should further experiments
confirm those which were made at Plaine Magnien.