Excerpt from Health Bulletin, 1917

There is a fair degree of suspicion that the head louse may also carry and transmit the typhus organism.

The body louse delights in woolen clothing, laying its eggs upon its fibers, but it can make itself very much at home in cotton spun material.

To prevent the introduction of typhus fever from Mexico into the States, no Mexican should be permitted to cross the boundary line without a permit given by the United States Public Health Service. All health officers should be on the lookout for the newly-arrived Mexicans who are settling in construction camps and about the centers of great industries and when these foreigners are found and fail to show a clean bill of health, they should be examined for lice. If lice are found, the clothes of the patient should be steamed or horned, the hair should be clipped and the body washed and wrapped in a sheet soaked with a mixture of one-half kerosene and one-half vinegar. The hair of the head should be wrapped in cheesecloth which has been soaked in this same mixture.

In looking for the lice, it is well to remember that when yon begin to strip the body they immediately make their retreat into the clothing. This makes it necessary to examine the clothing and if lice are found it is certain that they have been on the body. Therefore the process of disinfecting or delousing is imperative.

If conditions will not permit of the destruction of the clothing, it should be steamed or baked until all signs of lice have been destroyed. The eggs must also be destroyed and this requires a penetrating and prolonged steaming or heating.

If infected lice are carried across the border into our midst, typhus fever may become prevalent in many places, as shown by California's experience. Those carrying lice are very apt to get into crowded housing conditions, where the lice have every opportunity of infecting a large number of people.

When health officers have proof that foreigners have come from infected districts, they should be held in quarantine for about twelve days after being cleansed, to cover the incubation stage of typhus fever.

Epidemic typhus fever is a very fatal disease, yet the death rate can be greatly reduced by intelligent medical aid. There has been a shortage of such medical aid in Pennsylvania for several years, ante-dating the outbreak of the present war and hereafter this shortage will inevitably be greater.

It is quite possible for the medical men and the Federal government to mis-calculate the necessities of our home people.

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