1. THE USE OF ANTITYPHOID VACCINE IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND AMONG CIVILIANS
- Author
-
F. W. Hachtel and H. W. Stoner
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,education.field_of_study ,business.industry ,Mortality rate ,Attack rate ,Population ,Public institution ,Articles ,medicine.disease ,Typhoid fever ,Vaccination ,Private life ,Family medicine ,Hospital nurse ,Medicine ,business ,education - Abstract
So much has been written on the prophylactic inoculation against typhoid fever in the last few years that it seems almost like an act of supererogation to -make a further report on this same subject. However, this work has been largely limited to military life, and as our inoculations have been given to inmates of institutions and to civilians, we feel that this is sufficient apology for adding to the literature upon the subject. Again, it is more with the hope of stimulating others to use antityphoid vaccine in private life than with the intention of proving the efficacy of this method of reducing the attack rate from typhoid fever, that we present our results. Indeed, no further proof of the .,efficiency of vaccination against enteric fever need be adduced than citing the brilliant results obtained at the encampment of the M-aneuver Division at San Antonio, -Texas. Nelson and Hall' state that of approximately 12,000 men at this camp only two became infected with typhoid fever. Of these one was a teamster who had -never been inoculated, the other a private of the hospital corps who had received two doses of the vaccine. These writers are of the opinion that with these cases ,of typhoid and with typhoid carriers present in the command, an epidemic of -enteric fever could not have been prevented had the troops not been immunized. We were led to take up this work by the report of Major Russell in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin for March, 1910, and by a knowledge of the -excessive attack rate from typhoid fever among physicians, nurses and attendants in hospitals. Thus Joslin and Overlander2 found that in the years 19021906 inclusive the morbidity rate for the nurses in six Boston hospitals was 161 -per 10,000, as compared with 20 per 10,000, which was the approximate attack Tate for the whole population of Massachusetts. These writers conclude that 4'the hospital nurse in Massachusetts is about eight times as liable to contract typhoid fever as the ordinary citizen." At the time this paper was presented our statistics from the local hospitals were very incomplete and showed at that time an attack rate of 1.4 per cent. or of 140 per 10,000 among nurses and -hospital attendants. Since then more nearly complete figures show the morrbidity rate for the five years preceding the inoculations to average about 500 per 10,000 among nurses. Since in the city at large the attack rate has -ranged from 24.5 to 42.2 per 10,000,* in these hospitals the nurses and attendants appear to be from about 12 to 20 times more likely to become infected than the citizens' of Baltimore.
- Published
- 1912