Among the diseases that broke out in the field-armies during the war of 1870–1, dysentery (epidemic dysentery) played an important rôle, especially in the months of October and November. Prior to the year 1870 it was a comparatively rare disease in Germany, whereas in France it was quite common. This is indicated by the fact that in the years 1863–9 the number of deaths due to dysentery in the French army (home stations) was twelve times as large as in the Prussian army. Particularly hard hit were the troops in and around Metz, where dysentery raged continuously and with considerable severity,[245] as well as in Strassburg and Sedan; in the city and vicinity of Paris the disease, owing to the advanced season of the year, raged less furiously. As a rule it was an open question whether the places in which the German troops contracted the disease were already infected beforehand, or whether the disease had been brought there for the first time by infected divisions of the French army. Of the German field-army, 38,975 men, all told, contracted dysentery (47·8 per 1,000 of the average number of troops under arms), and of these 2,405 died. Of the average number of French prisoners taken to Germany 41·7 per cent contracted the disease; nearly all the cases of the disease were among the prisoners themselves, who brought the germ with them, and the result was that the number of cases soon began to decrease. It was, of course, inevitable that numerous prison-guards should contract the disease, but nowhere did it spread in a serious way to the civil population.