Tetracycline, chloramphenicol, and doxycycline are commonly used. Infection can also be prevented by vaccination.Some of the simplest methods of prevention and treatment focus on preventing infestation of body lice. Completely changing the clothing, washing the infested clothing in hot water, and in some cases also treating recently used bedsheets all help to prevent typhus by removing potentially infected lice. Clothes left unworn and unwashed for 7 days also result in the death of both lice and their eggs, as they have no access to a human host. Another form of lice prevention requires dusting infested clothing with a powder consisting of 10% DDT, 1% malathion, or 1% permethrin, which kill lice and their eggs.Other preventive measures for individuals are to avoid unhygienic, extremely overcrowded areas where the causative organisms can jump from person to person. In addition, they are warned to keep a distance from larger rodents that carry lice, such as rats, squirrels, or opossums. History
History of outbreaks
Before 19th century
During the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 BC), the city-state of Athens in ancient Greece had an epidemic, known as the Plague of Athens, which killed, among others, Pericles and his two elder sons. The plague returned twice more, in 429 BC and in the winter of 427/6 BC. Epidemic typhus is proposed as a strong candidate for the cause of this disease outbreak, supported by both medical and scholarly opinions. The first description of typhus was probably given in 1083 at La Cava abbey near Salerno, Italy.
This ultimately intensified racial tensions and fueled efforts to ban immigrants to the US from the Southern Hemisphere because the immigrants were associated with the disease. Literature
(1847) In Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, an outbreak of typhus occurs in Janes school Lowood, highlighting the unsanitary conditions the girls live in. (1862) In Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, Evgeny Bazarov dissects a local peasant and dies after contracting typhus. (1886) In the short story "Excellent People" by Anton Chekhov, typhus kills a Russian provincial. (1886) In The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous by George Augustus Henry Sala: "We Convicts were all had to the Grate, for the Knight and Alderman would not venture further in, for fear of the Gaol Fever;"
(1890) In How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, the effects of typhus fever and smallpox on "Jewtown" are described. (1935) Hans Zinssers Rats, Lice and History, although a touch outdated on the science, contains many useful cross-references to classical and historical impact of typhus. (1940) in The Don Flows Home to the Sea by Mikhail Sholokhov, numerous characters contract typhus during the Russian Civil War. (1946) In Viktor Frankls Mans Search for Meaning, Frankl, a Nazi concentration camp prisoner and trained psychiatrist, treats fellow prisoners for delirium due to typhus, while being occascionally affected with the disease himself. (1955) In Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita, Humbert Humberts childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh, dies of typhus.