The prophylaxis of travellers' diarrhoea

Abstract

While a causative organism may be found, the majority of cases escape clear cut pathological classification. Certain features of Traveller's -Diarrhoea such as its incidence, prevalence and spread, for instance in families strongly suggest an infective causation and it is perhaps logical to think that one is dealing with an infective group of disorders for two further reasons. Firstly, changes of climate, temperature, surroundings, diet and water as "pure drinking water", in the absence of pathogenic organisms have not been shown to cause diarrhoea by themselves and those who propose climatic environmental change alone as a causal agent have not shown any mechanism whereby these factors directly affect the bowel.