Treatment of Typhoid Fever With Type Specific Bacteriophage

Bacteriophage has been used for the past ten years in the treatment of patients with typhoid fever in the Communicable Disease Unit of the Los Angeles County General Hospital.₁During the first four years of this period unselected stock bacteriophage was utilized for therapy. All the patients so treated reacted with a chill and fever, to be described in more detail later. Therapeutically, some seemed to derive no benefit whatever, while others proceeded with an obviously or at least an apparently modified course, and some achieved truly startling bacteriologic and clinical recovery. Results in these latter patients were so spectacular that they caused us to continue the study despite the discouragement of many failures and indifferent successes, for they seemed to indicate an unknown factor which might, when discovered, lead to more uniformly good results. Bower²published a preliminary report of the problem at this stage. The search