What are the effects on the body?
The first effects of typhus on the body are abdominal pain. The second effect is backache and a dull red rash that usually starts in the middle of the body and then spreads outward. The patient will have an extremely high fever that will last for 2 weeks. Then the patient will develop a headache and start coughing uncontrollably. The patient would soon have joint and muscle pain which will make it nearly impossible to move . Finally the patient would become nauseated and start to vomit. After this point, you would either die or slowly recover.
- What is the origin of typhus?
No one knows the real origin of typhus. However, typhus has always been associated with war so it is common for someone to call typhus war fever. What caused typhus was a bacteria like organism called Rickettsia prowazekii ( da Rocha-Lima). Lice are the only vector that passes typhus from one living organism to the next. As the lice pass the disease, it also contracts the disease its self. This causes the louse to rupture. The main way that people got typhus was scratching the lice feces into their wound.
History of Typhus outbreaks
In the eighteenth century typhus killed more prisoners than execution; and that was when capital punishment was common. Therefore, it was called gaol or (jail fever). It had also killed several prominent judges who had been infected in the courthouse. During WWI three million people died; and that was only when we had a world population of two billion; now we have over seven billion people who could be at risk of being infected.
By Aaron Hamel