Historical. The disease, now known as murine typhus fever, was first reported by Paullin (1) in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1913. The epidemiology of the disease was studied by Maxcy (2) who, in 1926, indicated the probability of its transmission from rats or mice to man through the bite of some parasitic bloodsucking arthropod. Dyer, Rumreich, and Badger (3) in 1931 reported the establishment of a strain of Rickettsia from fleas removed from rats which had been trapped at a typhus focus. The number of reported cases of murine typhus fever in the United States was about 150 in 1928 and, with a few minor deviations, increased steadily to 5,338 in 1944 (fig. 1).

Although murine typhus has occurred in 38 states in the United States, it is most prevalent in the nine southern states of Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee in the order named.