From the beginning of civilization, disease has been the silent partner of war, and the most destructive of all disease is typhus. Typhus waits until starvation and poverty have done their work, and then its forces go to work. Disease bearing lice and rats come from their hiding places, and typhus the conqueror strikes. This is the story of how our armed forces used a new and 'safe' insecticide against an epidemic of typhus during the war. Illegal now for over forty years in the United States, we know now, of the disastrous consequences of the use of insecticides.