On the role of rats in the epidemiology of intestinal infections

Typhoid fever, dysentery, paratyphoid fever and food-borne toxicoses of the paratyphoid type are relatively well studied bacteriologically. The spread of these diseases is mainly due to factors such as water, flies, bacilliform carriage in humans; in the case of paratyphoid toxic infections it is also due to insufficient veterinary surveillance at slaughter, unsanitary conditions of carcass transportation, lack of proper sanitary surveillance during storage and manufacture of various kinds of food products. The presence of the virus outside the epidemic period, for example in winter, is poorly understood. Experimental studies published in the literature on this subject are scarce and somewhat contradictory.