A comparative study of epicillin and chloramphenicol in the treatment of enteric fever

One hundred patients with acute enteric fever were randomly assigned to treatment with either chloramphenicol 50 mg/kg body-weight or epicillin 1 g six hourly. Eighty-one patients had a positive blood culture for typhoid or paratyphoid bacilli and nineteen had a positive stool culture with a significant Widal titre. All fifty patients in the group treated with chloramphenicol responded, however there was one relapse with bacteraemia. In the group treated with epicillin, six from the total of fifty patients were considred treatment failures. Treatment was considred as a failure if the patient was febrile after ten days treatment or if there was a deterioration despite antibiotic therapy.