Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
The proximity of the scene of the war in January and February 1813
caused typhus fever to break out in the Swiss Cantons lying close to the
French border; for example, in the cantons of Basel-Stadt, Basel-Land,
Neuenburg, Solothurn, and Waadt. The number of deaths in these cantons
was:[177]
_Year._ _Basel-Stadt._ _Basel-Land._ _Neuenburg._ _Solothurn._ _Waadt._
1812 442 867 1,041 1,349 3,705
1813 425 748 1,014 1,072 3,186
1814 721 1,679 1,335 1,844 3,475
1815 479 812 1,220 1,240 3,267
1816 355 710 1,234 3,720
According to A. Burckhardt,[178] lazaret-fever broke out in Basel with
extraordinary fury when the Allies passed through that city; it raged
particularly among the foreign soldiers, but also attacked the
attendants in the hospitals and the civil inhabitants. The number of
deaths caused by it is unknown.
6. TYPHUS FEVER IN AUSTRIA IN THE YEARS 1813–14.[179]
The country in Austria which was most exposed to the ravages of the
epidemic of typhus fever was Bohemia, along whose borders the war was
for a long time carried on. As early as February 1813, ‘nerve-fever’,
accompanied by petechiae, was borne by Bavarian and Prussian troops into
the district of Königgrätz, but thanks to energetic and strict measures
of precaution, it did not become very widespread. The principal outbreak
of the epidemic in Bohemia took place in the autumn of the year 1813.
The number of typhus-fever patients taken into the Prague hospital in
September 1813 was 39, in October 77, in November 196, and in December
287.[180] The region along the Saxon border suffered the most: e.g. the
districts of Leitmeritz, Saaz, Rakonitz, and Elbogen. In the Leitmeritz
district typhus appeared in August, and became more severe in September
and October; the places along the military road leading from Dresden to
Prague were particularly hard hit. The epidemic lasted until April. In
the near-by Kaurzim district sick and wounded soldiers of all nations
arrived, after the battles of Pirna, Dresden, and Kulm, causing a
virulent epidemic to break out everywhere; in many places all the
inhabitants contracted it. In the latter part of the year, when the
pestilence seemed to have abated a little, it broke out anew when the
French garrison was being taken from Dresden to its place of detention;
in fourteen days 2,422 persons in sixty places contracted the disease,
which disappeared in May. Typhus fever had spread over 103 localities,
all told, in that region, and of 8,066 people who contracted it, 751
succumbed. In the Saaz district typhus broke out in the last part of
October 1813, and carried away large numbers of people; it raged all
along the military road in the vicinity of the scene of the war. The
highest mortality was in the month of December, and in May the
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