TYPHOID IN AMERICAN CITIES

The seventh annual summary of the typhoid death rates in large American cities appears in this issue of The Journal,¹ and constitutes an encouraging record of sanitary achievement. It might have been anticipated that typhoid would increase in this country during 1918. The absorption of national interest and energy in the war, the absence of thousands of physicians and sanitarians from their accustomed posts, the almost unavoidable interference in many places with normal housing and industrial conditions, the hasty construction of industrial towns in the neighborhood of many cities, and the unprecedented shifting of population, giving the typhoid carriers an opportunity for maximum contact, are all factors that it might have been reasonably supposed would cooperate in producing a general typhoid rate higher than for several years past. It is true that the greatest source of typhoid infection in all previous wars has been removed, namely, the excessive prevalence