Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella typhi, serotype Typhi.
The disease has received various names, such as gastric fever, abdominal typhus, infantile remittant fever, slow fever, nervous fever or pythogenic fever. The name "typhoid" means "resembling typhus" and comes from the neuropsychiatric symptoms common to typhoid and typhus. Despite this similarity of their names, typhoid fever and typhus are distinct diseases and are caused by different species of bacteria.
The impact of this disease fell sharply with the application of 20th century sanitation techniques.
Read more about Typhoid Fever: Signs and Symptoms, Transmission, Diagnosis, Prevention, Medical Treatment, Epidemiology, History, See Also These
Famous quotes containing the word fever:
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)