to the elevated regions of the western United States.
This want of information is apt to prevail in regions remote from
medical centers, and leads to neglect of the necessary strict measures
for the protection of neighboring communities, for the excretion of
one typhoid patient has led to thousands of cases and hundreds of
deaths.

Typhoid fever is a communicable disease caused by a germ which attacks
the intestines chiefly, but also invades the blood, and at times all
the other parts of the body, and is characterized by continued fever,
an eruption, tenderness and distention of the bowels, and generally
diarrhea. It is common to all parts of the earth in the temperate
zones, and occurs more frequently from July to December in the north
temperate zone, from February to July in the south temperate zone. It
is most prevalent in the late summer and autumn months and after a
hot, dry summer. Individuals between the ages of fifteen and thirty
are more prone to typhoid fever, but no age is exempt. The sexes are
almost equally liable to the disease, although it is said that for
every four female cases there are five male cases. The robust succumb
as readily as the weak.

=Cause and Modes of Communication.=--While the typhoid germ is always
the immediate cause, yet it is brought in contact with the body in
various ways. Contamination of water supply through bad drainage is
the principal source of epidemics of typhoid. Before carefully
protected public water supplies were in vogue in Massachusetts, there
were ninety-two deaths from typhoid fever in 100,000 inhabitants,
while thirty-five years after town water supplies became the rule,
there were only nineteen deaths for the same population. Whenever
typhoid is prevalent, the water used for drinking and all other
household purposes should be boiled, and uncooked food should be
avoided. Flies are carriers of typhoid germs by lighting on the nose,
the mouth, and the discharges of typhoid patients, and then conveying
the germs to food, green vegetables, and milk. Cooking the food,
preventing contact of flies with the patients, and keeping flies out
of human habitations becomes imperative. Milk is a source of contagion
through contaminated water used to wash cans, or to adulterate it, or
through handling of it by patients or those who have come in contact
with patients. Oysters growing in the mouths of rivers and near the
outlets of drains and sewers are carriers of typhoid germs,