THE TYPHUS DANGER

In the threatened invasion of typhus with the tide of immigration from Central Europe. United States health authorities face a serious problem. Not since the prevalence of infantile paralysis more than four years ago, or possibly the more recent epidemic of influenza, has the country been menaced with any malady so dangerous to our national health. So critical has the situation become that the United States Public Health Service has been forced to impose stringent sanitary regulations on immigrants; and Italy, by closing her frontiers, has temporarily suspended emigration from Central Europe to the United States.

Education leads to better hygienic conditions, and the degree of civilization existing in the United States has been the means of keeping us comparatively free from epidemics traceable to unsanitary methods of living. However fortunate we have been in the past, we cannot now afford to relax our vigilance against future peril. Two deaths have been reported in New York City, the first fatalities resulting from the typhus since 1892; health officials at that city have detected scores of vermin-bearing immigrants admitted through the port of Boston. Although the co-operation of the Italian Health Service shows important progress, it by no means precludes danger from other sections of the continent. The immigration authorities can do not better than to follow Italy's lead in handling the situation, for an outbreak of such a disease would cast grave reflections not only on them because of their failure carefully to quarantine and delouse all new arrivals, but also on us as a people, since typhus is spread by the ignorance of a proper manner of living and a disregard of personal cleanliness.