Talk:Typhus

Manual of Style - temperatures
I reverted edits which replaced one temperature scale with another. Per manual of style: the source system should be used with the alternate system in parenthesis. Agreement here? WBardwin (talk) 00:14, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

First Reliable Description
"The first reliable description of the disease appears during the Spanish siege of Moorish Granada in 1489."

So Thucydides' description of the typhus epidemic in Athens is unreliable, is it? Even though we've exhumed tooth pulp from contemporary graves which confirm it?Jatrius (talk) 09:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

-lets try to avoid talking smack on wikipedia, shall we? the talk page is not for sarcasm. if you want to take pleasure from the mistakes of others, do it somewhere else. Like Facebook. Also, "we" have not exhumed tooth pulp from graves, Scientists have done that. 2605:E000:B058:E300:283D:CC7C:6643:98A1 (talk) 04:10, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Moving misplaced sentence
The following is in the WW1 section yet clearly can only refer to WW2 (see DDT article if in doubt): "Even larger epidemics in the post-war chaos of Europe were only averted by the widespread use of the newly discovered DDT to kill the lice on millions of refugees and displaced persons." I am moving it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Channelwatcher (talk • contribs) 20:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

WW2 Dr Russell Barton, British Medic at Belsen
In a 1990s presentation of a 1985 witness interview, Dr. Russell Barton explains the typhus epidemic conditions in the WW2 Belsen concentration / POW camp.

He states that about 56% of people with the disease died of it, and that younger persons had a better chance of survival because their blood vessel and capillary walls were more elastic than those of older patients. He states that the camp was meant to hold 3,000 people, but German high command ordered the commandant there to house another 50,000 inmates from the Eastern front even after the camp was over filled to 7,000 to 10,000 inmates--bringing the total to between 57,000 to 60,000 inmates. Barton states that the daily death toll initially was 500, but this number reduced to 60 per day when food intake of appropriate formula was finally achieved after under a week's time of juggling the elements of the mixture of powdered milk and brown cane sugar. Initially, glucose alone or other items alone caused the patients to die quickly due to vomiting & aspiration or GI tract rupture troubles.

Supposedly, the naked, emaciated bodies resulted from clothed dead bodies being ejected from the barracks. Prisoners would then steal clothing that was in short supply from the dead. The diseased and dead person's clothing was contaminated with lice, eggs, and feces--contributing to additional spread of typhus and other diseases.

There was food shortages as it was, but supposedly certain gangs of prisoners behaved like warlords where they would grab all of the food, eat their fill, then afterward let the remaining prisoners eat the left-overs. A weaker, sick prisoner would quickly become weaker in this sad situation. The axis guards of the camp did not have DDT (like the American and British) to fumigate to wipe out the lice infestation that continued to spread the disease, and they let the prisoners sort the food for themselves.

The food shortages were caused by an on-going, targeted allied campaign to bomb trains, and truck convoys carrying food in order to weaken enemy resolve. Churchill prolonged the targeted food campaign to such an extent that it even caused substantial numbers of civilians to die of starvation in Greece.

After the liberation forces had been at Belsen for two or more weeks time, Barton was asked "why British troops hadn't taken any sanitary actions to clear the dead bodies?" Barton seems to answer that he didn't know why they had not taken any sanitary precautions with the dead, however, newsreel footage captured the carnage in the camp, and documented the commencement of clean-up efforts where mass graves were used. These newsreels were used at the Nuremberg trials to convict many of the war criminals involved.

Video 1 Video 2 Video 3

Can any of this information be used in the article? Oldspammer (talk) 11:03, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Typhus epidemic of 1847
I've just created a start-up article Typhus epidemic of 1847, focused on its impact in Canada from 1847-1848. I believe it should be globalized in scope. If you agree, please feel free to expand and edit. (This message has also been left at Talk:Epidemic typhus). Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to rearrange several articles
In my opinion it is utterly hard for the reader to distinguish the different names of typhus-related diseases. There has been misconceptions of disease names in the past, and new organisms/vectors in this group have recently been found to impact peoples health substantially. I suggest someone dedicated and skilled in this subject have a look at the following pages.


 * Rickettsial
 * Rickettsia typhi
 * Typhus
 * Typhus (disambiguation)
 * Spotted fever

There may be even more links related to this. Hopefully they can be reorganized, to achieve better overview and less repeated information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.69.138.18 (talk • contribs) 09:35, 20 September 2012. Moved here from the article by Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:10, 20 September 2012 (UTC))


 * What do you think the title of the article covering this should be? There are very few people working on medical articles here. If you can say in rough terms what you think the best solution is, I'll try to implement it. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:17, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd suggest Typhus should be the master article, with redirects from the others — OwenBlacker (Talk) 21:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Epidemics resulting from the Columbian Exchange
I was a little surprised that there's no mention that Typhus was one of the three main eruptive fevers of the Columbian Exchange (along with smallpox and measles), being majorly responsible for the decimation of the Native American population (from c. 100–120 million before Columbus to c. 20 million by 1600).

I don't know a lot about the subject (I know some, but don't have references to hand and need to study on my Coursera course at the moment), but I can try to flesh this out once I have time to spare. If anyone knows more (or fancies researching and compiling information; I can recommend starting with a copy of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel), then that would probably be better (and quicker) than anything I could add in. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 21:15, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Vaccine Contradiction
In the first section, the article says:

There is no vaccine.

Then in the Prevention section, it states:

The most effective way to prevent typhus is inoculation with the typhus vaccine series

They can't both be correct, can they? Which one is accurate? Meowsqueak (talk) 00:10, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks User:Meowsqueak. The lead is referenced and correct while the body is not. Updating. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 02:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

There (still? again?) is a referral to an existing vaccine at the very end of the article ("has been developed in WWII"). Maybe someone would like to include a short paragraph on vaccines, past/existing and present/non-existent to clarify? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.246.2.112 (talk) 06:49, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Typhus in the United States
Flea-borne typhus is becoming an increasing problem in semi-tropical areas along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Houston Chronicle, Typhus making comeback in Texas Fortguy (talk) 21:53, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Addition of cite check template
The reason I added the template is because there was conflicting info in the article. In the lede, it says, "Typhus... is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus and murine typhus" and the statement is backed with a citation from the CDC. But later in the article, regarding Scrub typhus, appeared a statement (in this diff) that said, "Unlike the two conditions above, though it has the word "typhus" in the name, it is currently usually not classified in the typhus group". As it can be seen, the information is contradictory. Hence I thought that the "citecheck" template was called for to investigate other possible contradictions and unverified content in the article. If someone agrees with this assessment please put the template back. Thinker78 (talk) 04:30, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
 * You removed these details "Unlike the two conditions above, though it has the word "typhus" in the name, it is currently usually not classified in the typhus group, but in the closely related spotted fever group. "
 * So should be good now. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 19:13, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Deletion of sourced material without discussion
It appears that an editor has been removing widely published information from the page. Please note that this is what the talk page is for, silently removing sourced material without explanation is not how Wikipedia operates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18F:4101:4830:84AE:8A7:F60A:8BAB (talk) 04:45, 12 February 2019 (UTC)


 * This page is not the place for this content "Upon publicizing her story, she was subsequently removed from her position in the Police Litigation Unit, against her wishes, and transferred to misdemeanor airport court."
 * This is an article about Typhus not about Greenwood. It is undue weight. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 04:51, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Vaccine again
Repeatedly the article says there is no commercially-available vaccine, but later it says a vaccine was developed in WW2. Is there a vaccine, or not? If so, is it not commercially-available? The article is confusing as it is; someone should clear this up. 73.138.3.167 (talk) 19:06, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is not commercially available now. The article is clear about this. Ruslik_ Zero 08:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Black Assize
@Septagram reverted my deletion of a statement about the Black Assize with no edit comment. My deletion was based on reading the cited source; the source says that the outbreak was thought to be caused by plague, cholera, smallpox or typhoid.

The present article makes clear that typhus and typhoid are distinct diseases. To link typhus to the Black Assize, a bette source is needed.

@Septagram, please come to talk and explain your comment-free reversion.

MrDemeanour (talk) 08:38, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Plagues and People
— Assignment last updated by GardOU (talk) 20:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)