As regards sanitation the German War of 1866 acquired importance through the appearance of cholera on the scene of the fighting. None of the other infectious diseases developed very extensively during this war; of the Prussian army, which numbered some 280,000 men, only 379, all told, succumbed to typhoid fever, and dysentery did not appear at all. A rather mild epidemic of small-pox spread throughout a considerable part of Germany in the year 1865, and lasted until the year 1866; whether or not the war helped the disease to spread, which is not unlikely, we cannot state with certainty owing to a lack of bases of comparison. The German troops were well vaccinated, and the number who contracted the disease was no larger during the war than in times of peace. It is undoubtedly true, however, that the war exerted an unwholesome influence upon the dissemination of cholera throughout Germany and Austria.[228] Cholera had revealed its presence in Germany for the first time in the year 1865; it broke out in Altenburg, during its fourth passage through Europe, having been borne thither from Odessa. In the course of the year it broke out, in a comparatively mild form, in many places in Saxony. In the year 1866 it raged very extensively and furiously in the Rhine province and in Westphalia, whither it was borne from Luxemburg; in May cases of the disease occurred in several seaport towns of Pomerania (Swinemünde, Stettin, Cammin, &c.), and in June it broke out in Hamburg, Berlin, Posen, Silesia, East and West Prussia, and in the kingdom of Saxony.[229] Thus it came about that some of the troops enlisted came from infected parts of Silesia and Saxony, and the result was that individual cases of cholera began to occur in the Prussian army. The disease was conveyed by soldiers from Stettin to Leipzig, where it spread to the civil population; from Leipzig it spread throughout Saxony and Thuringia. When the Prussian army advanced into Bohemia the cases of the disease began to increase, and after the battle of Königgrätz (July 3, 1866) the dissemination of the disease was helped along by the crowding together of large numbers of sick and wounded soldiers. The rapid advance of the Prussian army increased the disease’s rate of dissemination; on all the army’s lines of march large numbers of sick soldiers were left behind, for example, in Göritz, Gitschin, Königinhof, Pardubitz, Czaslau, and Leitomischl. In Prague cases of cholera were reported a few days after the city was occupied. The pestilence was conveyed by Prussian soldiers to Moravia, where it appeared in Prerau, Brünn, Iglau, Klosterbrück, Znaym, and Nikolsburg. The further advance of the Prussians conveyed it to Lower Austria; in Vienna it did not break out until August.