Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
According to Seitz, 18,427 cases of the disease and 3,084 deaths
attributable to it were officially recorded in Bavaria between October
1813 and June 1814; the lists kept by the Governmental Districts were
undoubtedly very incomplete, but on the other hand we must assume that
the contagious and non-contagious ‘nerve-fevers’ (typhus and typhoid)
were not always distinguished. For the several districts Seitz furnishes
us with the following figures relating to the number of people who
contracted and succumbed to typhus fever:
_The Region of the_ _No. Patients._ _No. Deaths._
Main 5,752 1,067
Rezat 2,135 32
Regen 1,627 290
Upper Danube 4,613 1,003
Lower Danube 1,338 270
Salzach 1,815 259
Isar 1,147 163
This does not include the number of deaths among the prisoners of war,
nor among the native and foreign soldiers. For the Main region, Seitz
also furnishes figures relating to the age of the patients; of the 5,752
persons who contracted the disease 453 were children, 1,345 were young
men and women, 3,657 were of middle age, and 297 were old men and women.
As in Bavaria, so also in Württemberg, typhus fever broke out in two
epidemics; the first, which was less extensive and less severe, was
caused by soldiers returning from Russia, and the second broke out in
consequence of the passing of troops through the country after the
battle of Leipzig. According to Elsässer,[162] in the first part of the
year 1813 there were 165 cases of typhus fever and twenty deaths due to
it reported from fifteen different localities. In the month of July the
disease disappeared from Württemberg. At the end of the year 1813,
however, the disease was again borne into the country, partly by French
prisoners, and partly by Russian soldiers. ‘Throughout Württemberg’,
says Lohnes,[163] ‘this fever appeared wherever foreign troops had
tarried. Consequently contagious typhus first appeared in the northern
lowlands, while the region around Tübingen and the southern and eastern
part of the country at the beginning did not suffer at all. But in
December, when large bodies of troops marched through the highlands, the
southern part of Württemberg, these fevers followed the soldiers’ lines
of march. At first it was the French prisoners who carried lazaret-fever
with them wherever they went, and a very severe form of the disease too;
later on, these fevers always broke out wherever the Russian soldiers
went, although very few of the soldiers themselves were infected with
them. Frequently persons contracted the disease who had no sick soldiers
in their homes. As a rule the disease in such cases was mild, but it was
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