Typhus is any of several similar
diseases caused by
Rickettsiae. The name comes from the
Greek typhos (τῦφος) meaning smoky or hazy, describing the state of mind of those affected with typhus. The causative organism
Rickettsia is an
obligate parasite and cannot survive for long outside living cells. Typhus should not be confused with
typhoid fever, as the diseases are unrelated.
Multiple diseases include the word "typhus" in their description. Types include:
Symptoms
Murine typhus
- Dull red rash that begins on the middle of the body and spreads
- Extremely high fever (105-106 degrees Fahrenheit)
Epidemic typhus
- High fever (104 degrees Fahrenheit)
History
The first reliable description of the disease appears during the Spanish siege of
Moorish Granada in 1489. These accounts include descriptions of fever and red spots over arms, back and chest, progressing to delirium, gangrenous sores, and the stink of rotting flesh. During the siege, the Spaniards lost 3,000 men to enemy action but an additional 17,000 died of typhus.
Typhus was also common in prisons (and in crowded conditions where lice spread easily), where it was known as
Gaol fever or
Jail fever.
Gaol fever often occurs when prisoners are frequently huddled together in dark, filthy rooms. Imprisonment until the next term of court was often equivalent to a death sentence. It was so infectious that prisoners brought before the court sometimes infected the court itself. Following the Assize held at
Oxford in 1577, later deemed the
Black Assize, over 300 died from
Epidemic typhus, including
Sir Robert Bell Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. During the Lent
Assize Court held at
Taunton (1730) typhus caused the death of the
Lord Chief Baron, as well as the
High Sheriff, the sergeant, and hundreds of others. During a time when there were 241 capital offenses- more prisoners died from 'gaol fever' than were put to death by all the public executioners in the British realm. In 1759, an English authority estimated that each year a quarter of the prisoners had died from Gaol fever. In
London, typhus frequently broke out among the ill-kept prisoners of
Newgate Gaol and then moved into the general city population.
A U.S. soldier is demonstrating DDT-hand spraying equipment. DDT was used to control the spread of typhus-carrying lice.
Epidemics occurred routinely throughout Europe from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and occurred during the
English Civil War, the
Thirty Years' War and the
Napoleonic Wars. In the Thirty Years' War, an estimated 8 million Germans were wiped out by bubonic plague and typhus fever..
During
Napoleon's retreat from
Moscow in 1812, more
French soldiers died of typhus than were killed by the
Russians.
A major epidemic occurred in
Ireland between 1816-19, and again in the late 1830s, and yet another major typhus epidemic occurred during the
Great Irish Famine between 1846 and 1849. The Irish typhus spread to England, where it was sometimes called "Irish fever" and was noted for its virulence. It killed people of all social classes as lice were
endemic and inescapable, but it hit particularly hard in the lower or "unwashed" social strata.
In
America, a typhus
epidemic killed the son of
Franklin Pierce in
Concord, New Hampshire in 1843 and struck in
Philadelphia in 1837. Several epidemics occurred in
Baltimore,
Memphis and
Washington DC between 1865 and 1873. Typhus was also a significant killer during the US Civil War, although
typhoid fever was the more prevalent cause of US Civil War "camp fever".
Typhoid fever, caused by Salmonella, is a completely different disease from typhus (see chart below).
During
World War I typhus caused three million deaths in
Russia and more in
Poland and
Romania. De-lousing stations were established for troops on the
Western front but the disease ravaged the armies of the Eastern front, with over 150,000 dying in
Serbia alone. Fatalities were generally between 10 to 40 percent of those infected, and the disease was a major cause of death for those nursing the sick. Between 1918 and 1922 typhus caused at least 3 million deaths out of 20–30 million cases. In
Russia after World War I, during the
civil war between the
White and
Red armies, typhus killed three million, largely civilians. Even larger epidemics in the post-war chaos of Europe were only averted by the widespread use of the newly discovered
DDT to kill the lice on millions of refugees and displaced persons.
Typhus epidemics killed inmates in the
Nazi Germany concentration camps; infamous pictures of typhus victims' mass graves can be seen in footage shot at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
[ pp. 508-511] Thousands of prisoners were held in appalling hygiene conditions in
Nazi concentration camps such Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen also died of typhus during World War II
[, including Anne Frank at the age of 15 and her sister Margot. ]
The first successful typhus vaccine was developed by the Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl in the period between the two world wars. Better, less dangerous and less expensive vaccines were developed during World War II.
Since then some epidemics have occurred in Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa.Contemporary Society
According to the UN WHO, typhus continues to kill approximately a weighted average of 0.2 people per million, per annum.
Given a global population of circa 7 billion inhabitants, this equates to a minimum of 1400 deaths per year.Treatment
Without treatment the disease can be fatal, particularly the epidemic form. Prompt treatment with antibiotics cures nearly every patient.
