The removal of the troops to Fundeni temporarily checked the dissemination of plague in Bucharest, but in the middle of August it broke out again, presumably in consequence of the arrival of more troops from the scene of the war; some thirty or forty villages were attacked by this epidemic, which lasted until the middle of November. In January 1829, plague was conveyed by troops to Moldau and Jassy, which they were to make their winter quarters; but the disease, notwithstanding the fact that it was wrongly diagnosed and declared to be typhus fever, was soon checked by energetic measures of precaution. Regarding the number of plague patients in the Russian army, which was also attacked by several other diseases, especially malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery, and fever, no information is available; the Russian army numbered 150,000 men, and, according to Seidlitz, 134,882 men were received into the lazarets and 75,226 men into the regimental sick-rooms up to the end of February 1829; thus 210,108 men contracted disease in a period of ten months.[187] In March 1829, plague broke out anew. Surgeon-General Witt, who had his head-quarters in Jassy, declared that the disease was not plague, but an endemic fever, and put an end to all measures of precaution in March. ‘After the patients were no longer quarantined,’ says Czetyrkin,[188] ‘the disease, bringing destruction in its train, in the spring and summer began to make headway and spread over Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria; it also accompanied the Russian army across the Balkan Peninsula and appeared in Rumelia, where it completely wiped out several hospitals. Those divisions of the army which were kept constantly on the march and were thus exposed to the fresh air, rain, and dew, suffered less severely; but the garrisons in the cities and strongholds were more furiously attacked by the dreaded enemy. The overcrowded condition of the lazarets, the lack of competent nurses and physicians (most of whom were exterminated by plague), the uncertainty regarding the nature of the disease—all this constituted the reason why the pestilence could not be checked.’ The disease first appeared in March 1829 throughout Wallachia, but after the middle of May it also revealed its presence south of the Danube; Galatz, Babadag, Kustendji, Mangalia, Bazardschik, and Kavarna were attacked in succession.