According to Michaux,[247] a former chairman of the Medical Society in Metz, a small epidemic of typhus fever raged among the civil inhabitants of that city during the siege. The correctness of this statement, however, is doubted, as no post-mortem examinations were made. It seems that fifty-five children and nine nurses in two orphan asylums contracted the disease, and that twenty-eight of the former and one of the latter succumbed to it; the first cases of the disease were reported early in October, and by the end of November the epidemic was over. This sudden disappearance of the disease was attributed by Michaux to the termination of the siege, a conclusion also upheld by Méry, who studied the disease in the Crimean War. Viry,[248] who until a few days before the siege had charge of the field hospital in Vallières (near Metz), where he treated some 250–300 patients every day, performed autopsies on all supposed victims of typhus fever, but in all cases found only the evidences of typhoid fever. Nevertheless, he believes it possible that typhus fever occurred there, and holds the view that the overcrowded condition of the city favoured a spontaneous outbreak of the disease. Laveran,[249] who was also present in Metz during the siege, disputes the correctness of Michaux’s diagnosis, as does the German Health Report, on the ground that the disease attacked children almost exclusively, that it caused such a high mortality, and that it disappeared so suddenly. He seems to think that it was some acute exanthema, probably haemorrhagic measles. This leaves unexplained the fact that a large number of nurses contracted the disease. III. THE GREAT EPIDEMIC OF SMALL-POX CAUSED BY THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR But while typhoid fever and dysentery in the Franco-German War attacked the civil population only in those parts of the country in which the fighting took place, and nowhere acquired epidemic dimensions, and while it is probable that typhus fever did not appear at all at that time, there occurred in connexion with the war a very severe epidemic of small-pox, which raged more extensively and furiously than any other epidemic in the course of the entire century, and spread not only throughout the belligerent countries, but also throughout all Europe.