Scientists believe that typhoid fever is an ancient illness tracing back millennia. They believe the disease may have caused Greece’s plague in 430 B.C. and helped extinguish the Jamestown Colony in the 1600s. Historians suspect that typhoid killed over 6,000 of the colonists that settled there.
Even despite that long history, we’re still struggling with the disease to this day, this time in the form of a superbug.
Typhoid fever is a highly contagious bacterium caused by the Salmonella typhi bacteria. The bacterium gets into food or drink, usually leading to symptoms withing one or two weeks.