In south-eastern France, small-pox did not become very widespread until after the outbreak of the war; in Lyons, for example, the epidemic began in the second half of October. To be sure, small-pox had appeared in several places in the year 1868, but by the winter of 1868–9 this epidemic was over, although individual cases continued to occur. Regarding the cause of the small-pox epidemic that broke out in Lyons in the autumn of 1870, Fonteret[260] gives us the following information: ‘Two causes could not help favouring the outbreak in our city; the movements of the troops that took place at that time, and the emigration of numerous Parisians, who since the beginning of September, that is to say, since the time when the epidemic began to rage furiously in Paris, passed through our city on their way to Switzerland.’ Regarding the course of the epidemic, no statistics covering the entire city are available, but we are able to see from the following table, compiled by Perroud, the number of small-pox patients taken in by the Hôtel-Dieu and the number that died there: _Patients._ _Deaths._ January-June (1870) 126 9 July-September 101 15 October 29 8 November 94 26 December 160 37 January (1871) 148 31 February 147 37 March 135 29 April 124 25 May 84 12 June 45 7 July 38 5 August-December 44 6 In the other cantons of the Department 935 deaths were officially recorded in the years 1870–1. It was observed in Lyons, as in other places, that not only the number of persons who contracted small-pox, but also the virulence of the disease itself, increased; whereas only 10.6 per cent of 227 sporadic cases resulted fatally between January and September, out of 1,004 persons who contracted the disease between October 1870 and July 1871 no less than 21.7 per cent died.