This is about the disease typhoid fever. See typhus for an unrelated disease with a similar name.
Typhoid fever is an illness caused by the bacteriumSalmonella typhi. Very common worldwide, it is transmitted by food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person. After infection, symptoms include a high fever from 103° to 104°F (39° to 40°C), weakness, headaches, lack of appetite, severe diarrhea, stomach pains, and a rash of flat, rose-colored spots. Extreme symptoms such as intestinal perforation, delusions, and confusion also are possible. Typhoid fever can be fatal. Antibiotics, such as ampicillin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, and ciprofloxacin are commonly used in treating typhoid fever.
A person may become an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, suffering no symptoms, but capable of infecting others. In 1907, Mary Mallon (known as "Typhoid Mary") became the first American carrier to be identified and traced. According to the Centers for Disease Control approximately 5% of people who contract typhoid continue to carry the disease after they recover.
When untreated, typhoid fever persists for three weeks to a month. Death occurs in between 10% and 30% of untreated cases. Vaccines for typhoid fever are available and are advised for persons traveling in regions where the disease is common (especially Asia, Africa, and Latin America).
'vmpov, the intestine) is a specific infectious fever characterized mainly by its insidious onset, by, a peculiar course of the temperature, by marked abdominal symptoms occurring in connexion with a specific lesion of the bowels, by an eruption upon the skin, by its uncertain duration, and by a liability to relapses.
There are, in truth, several entericfevers, and the appropriation of a term having a general meaning to one of them is inconvenient.
Other changes common to most fevers are also to be observed, such as softening of the muscular tissues generally, and particularly of the heart, and evidences of complications affecting chest or other organs, which not infrequently arise.
The disease consists of fever, abdominal cramps, and bloody diarrhoea with mucus.
Fever is present in about half the patients and a mild headache may be present.
When untreated, the average duration of fever is 30 days with a mortality of 20%; an additional 10% suffer a relapse of fever, intestinal haemorrhage or peritonitis.
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