To the Editor:
—Recent newspaper reports indicate that the number of cases of typhoid in the Montreal epidemic will exceed 2,000, which means that there will be 200 deaths, or possibly more.My purpose in this communication is to call attention to another prospective result of importance—namely, the chronic carriers, certain to be produced—and to suggest that the Montreal epidemic has brought, along with its tragedy, an opportunity for research which may, in the end, save more lives than will be lost in the epidemic.Although the key to present and future control of typhoid in most communities is the healthy carrier, it must be admitted that our knowledge of carriers, and the technic of their detection, is in a deplorably uncertain state. The largest health departments in this country have customarily found about 2 per cent of carriers among their recovered patients. Some authors, such as Gay (Typhoid Fever,