ENDEMIC TYPHUS FEVER IN HAWAII

There is an ever increasing interest in the epidemiology and geographic distribution of American typhus fever. Epidemic (Old World) typhus fever was well known to the physicians of the early nineteenth century. Typhus fever was first differentiated from typhoid by Gerhard, studying the Philadelphia epidemic of 1836. Typhoid means a disease like typhus fever. Typhus abdominalis became a clinical entity under the name of typhoid. Eberth in 1880 and Gaffky in 1884 discovered the typhoid bacillus, now more properly designated Eberthella typhi. Brill in 1897 observed a disease in New York, which he differentiated from typhoid and which, for a long time, bore his name. At that time he considered it a distinct clinical entity in no way related to typhoid, nor, later, to typhus fever. Subsequently it was proved to be immunologically similar to European typhus. In 1906 Ricketts discovered the small gram-negative intracellular bodies that bear his name