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As regards the second point, it is important to remember the
comparatively simple channels of dissemination affecting the disease
locally and which may be readily overlooked. Locally the
disease is spread most largely in all probability by personal
contact, particularly among children. The bacillus which causes
it, exists in large numbers in the throat and mouth of the patient.
It is probable that diphtheritic children licking slates or exchanging
sweets from mouth to mouth, are far more likely to spread the
disease than a defective drain, though this latter by lowering vitality
diminishes the power of resistance to the disease. The difficulty
of controlling such a disease is further enhanced by the fact that
the germ may remain dormant but infective for many weeks in the
throat of an apparently healthy person, or a person suffering from
an ordinary sore throat. In certain years personal infection seems
to be more potent than in others, and then we get an epidemic.
Typhoid Fever.—Enteric (or Typhoid) Fever is a disease caused
by a specific germ. The symptoms are continuous fever of some
weeks' duration accompanied by prostration, usually by an eruption
of rose-coloured spots, and often by diarrhoea. In certain parts of
the bowel, the lymph glands and other structures become inflamed
and ulcerated, and sometimes serious complications may supervene.