Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
among the civil inhabitants was thereby increased is shown by the
following figures, which include only the deaths in the civil
population:
July (1813) 86
August 83
September 93
October 103
November 328
December 289
January (1814) 264
February 248
March 212
April 132
May 135
June 76
Four physicians and seven surgeons succumbed to the epidemic in
Frankfurt. Of 668 typhus-fever patients taken in by the Hospital zum
Heiligen Geist, 100 died. Generally speaking, Frankfurt-on-the-Main
fared pretty well, for the reason that most of the patients were housed
outside the city; the lower classes, particularly servants and maids,
suffered the most. In the city itself the disease was confined chiefly
to the narrow streets of the Altstadt. In March and April the pestilence
began gradually to abate, and in May it ceased altogether.
After leaving Hanau the retreating French army went on to Mayence and
France. The great loss of human life due to typhus fever during the
siege of Mayence will be discussed in the tenth chapter. Wiesbaden[152]
was attacked very severely; 800 men are said to have died in the
military lazaret there, while of the native inhabitants, who numbered
4,000 at that time, 466 contracted the disease and 141 succumbed to it.
From Mayence the pestilence spread and infected the Rheingau; the
outbreak in Oestrich (below Hattenheim on the Rhine) is described by
Thilenius.[153] In October sick and wounded French soldiers were taken
down the Rhine, and in the latter part of that month 500 soldiers on
three boats were held up by a severe storm at Oestrich, where the bad
weather compelled them to remain for twenty-four hours. The patients,
contrary to orders, left the ships and were taken in by the inhabitants
of Oestrich. Before they went away fourteen of them died; a number had
already died on the boats. On November 7 five or six citizens of
Oestrich contracted the disease; before the 9th more than thirty had
been taken sick, and on the 10th there were 93 typhus-fever patients in
the city. All told, 330 people in Oestrich contracted the disease, and
103 succumbed to it. In the latter part of November neighbouring places
were infected by dispersed French soldiers, by the small lazarets of the
troops of the Allies, by visits to the sick, and by participation in
funeral ceremonies. Particularly hard hit was the town of Kiedrich,
where 336 people contracted the disease and 69 succumbed to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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