What Is Typhus? Symptoms, Spread, and Suppression

Typhus is a filth disease that spreads through rats, lice and poor sanitation. In addition to fever, rash and nausea, typhus victims experience delirium, stupor and sensitivity to light. Today, typhus prevails in developing countries with inadequate sanitation.

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Today's short medical history film covers Typhus, one of the deadliest unseen enemies against man. The filmmaker has included the original voice over script to further assist your understanding:

From the early 16th century until the mid-20th century, Typhus took the lives of more soldiers than all military actions combined. In cities, more died from typhus than from street accidents, crime, starvation or civil unrest. In prisons throughout pre-20th century Europe, typhus extracted a greater death toll than mistreatment, torture and execution combined, which caused the disease to be appropriately named, “Jailhouse Fever.”

Typhus victims experience nausea, fever and rash, progressive delirium and stupor, gangrenous sores, severe headaches and a piercing sensitivity to light. The name typhus comes from the ancient Greek word Typhos, meaning smoky or lazy, which describes the state of mind of those afflicted by the disease. The responsible bacteria, identified today as Rickettsia prowazekii (pro-a-zeeky), is now known to be widespread in rodent hosts, including mice and rats, although it ultimately spreads to humans via mites, fleas, body lice and the North American Flying Squirrel.

In North America, typhus epidemics struck Philadelphia in 1837, followed by an outbreak in 1843 in Concord NH which took the life of the son of Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States. Similar outbreaks were unleashed in Baltimore, Memphis and Washington DC between the years of 1865 and 1873. Comparable to present-day Third World shantytowns and refugee camps, the Industrial Revolution further strengthened typhus as a lethal disease. Categorized as a filth disease, Typhus flourished in North American cities before the creation of antibiotics such as tetracycline and an effective array of vaccines, exacerbated by foul housing, overcrowding, overflowing cesspools, poverty, hunger and physical exhaustion.

Today, Typhus remains virtually wiped out in North America, thanks to the advent of modern sanitation techniques and the eradication of rats and lice. Still prevalent in the Asia/Pacific basin, in developing countries with inadequate sanitary measures, the CDC estimates about one million new Typhus infections annually, with a death rate of 300,000 lives.

And there you have it, Typhus, today on The Daily Dose.

[LindaMerchant-bqhp]

Sad anne and her sister was in a war camp but to get tyghus

[brocknspectre]

My father and my uncle both got Typhus while living in Stockholm during WW2. My father survived. My uncle did not.

[markford]

Anne Frank and her sister Margot died of typhus

[drevon]

Uzi kiden Yieden deutsche caboots nan audo danke