The more important advances made in the different departments of medicine in modern times appear to have resulted more or less directly from various discoveries and developments in the science of bacteriology. In this way not only has the domain of practical medicine and surgery been widely extended, and new fields opened for advanced work, but in like manner great improvements in the management of disease have resulted from bringing into more intelligent and better use much of the means acquired in former times.
A brief mention of certain points in the etiology, pathology, and treatment of the common infectious disease, enteric (typhoid) fever, as they are now understood, may illustrate. The wide prevalence and great mortality shown in the history of this disease give much importance to any discovery which promises improvement either in its management or in the means of its prevention.
TYPHOID IN THE PAST.
The time