Who of us will not remember as long as he lives those harrowing scenes, which one cannot describe without shuddering? Who will ever forget those hundreds of wagons filled with unhappy wounded men who had had no medical care since leaving Leipzig; and packed in with them were sick men suffering from dysentery, typhus fever, &c., almost all of them dying of inanition, weakness, and filth, as well as of disease. Those unfortunate men piteously begged only for a place in a hospital already filled with dying men, only to receive in reply a forced refusal. And so they were under the cruel necessity of going further to die, with the result that they infected all the towns and villages along their route, wherever they were granted a generous hospitality. Strassburg, comparatively speaking, suffered but little. As early as December 1, the prefect of Strassburg had issued orders that a special building should be set aside in every town for the reception of sick soldiers that arrived there, and that they should under no circumstances be housed in the homes of citizens. In October and November convalescents had been quartered in the residences of citizens, who had subsequently been infected. In November the number of typhus-fever patients, which averaged ten or fifteen per month, increased to thirty-six, and in December to 100. In accordance with the above-mentioned decree all newly-arrived soldiers were examined by a Board of Health; the sick were sent to the hospital, and the healthy were quartered with citizens. ‘Notwithstanding this,’ says Reisseisen,[172] ‘the healthy ones infected a large number of inhabitants through their old woollen overcoats, which were thoroughly saturated with the miasma of the hospitals. The clothes that were sold privately were particularly dangerous, so that in the latter part of December strict orders were issued to keep watch for the old clothes and burn them. In the first part of January, when the rather lax siege began, typhus fever spread irresistibly throughout the city; in that month the pestilence reached its climax with 175 deaths. On January 22 the prefects ordered general fumigations in all public buildings, and recommended that the citizens should also fumigate their homes. The result was very successful; in February 112 people died, in March 75, and in April 27, and then typhus fever disappeared. No foreign troops marched through the stronghold, and although all the French prisoners of war passed through the city, no more citizens were infected by them, for the reason that they were quartered in the fortifications.