Typhoid Fever, With Particular Reference To the Crowthorne Epidemic, 1949*

DURING the Easter week-end of I949-I5th-z8th April-Bacillus typhos’lts, or, to give him his proper name, Salmonella typhi, suddenly &dquo; declared war &dquo; in the village of Crowthorne, in Berkshire. He chose his time well. Crowthorne was sweltering in summer heat. It was crowded with week-end visitors ; buses brought many loads of day trippers. He invaded thirteen households in the village, hiding himself in the slices of corned beef which had been bought to supplement the week-end joint. Forty-nine people permanently resided in the infected houses, and there were nineteen visitors residing there during the week-end. Thirty-three, or 67 per cent., of the residents were attacked. Seven, or 37 per cent., of the visitors became victims when they returned to their homes. The remaining twelve visitors escaped, either because they brought their own corned beef with them, or because they had the &dquo; joint &dquo; and not the corned beef. Fifty-six people were at risk in the households where cases occurred ; forty-one, or 73 per cent., of them were infected. Two deaths followedroughly 5 per cent. of the total. Two of the cases have become chronic &dquo; carriers,&dquo; both, fortunately, from the same house. Chloramphenical, more popularly known as chloromycetin, was used for the first time in this country in the treatment of numbers of the cases in this epidemic, with what appears to be dramatic results. This Salmonella typhi, type E.i, having paid this short visit to a solid foodstuff, perhaps to remind us that it can be a food-poisoning organism, too, quietly disappeared. He came and went like a shooting-star, effectively covering up his coming in and his going out. He may appear again, somewhere, if he gets conditions exactly to his liking, or his race may be run. At any rate, he has many relatives up and down the country. The story of this epidemic is one in which, at the beginning, it looked &dquo; all Lombard Street to a china orange &dquo; that the culprit would be caught. The crime detection was unsuccessful, but the history of the events is interesting and instructive enough to be recorded.