Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
Thanks to the well-vaccinated condition of the German troops, the army
suffered comparatively little from small-pox. In the field army 4,385
men (61·3 per 1,000) contracted the disease, and 278 of them (3·5 per
cent of those who contracted it) died. Including the officers,
physicians, and officials, the number taken sick was 4,991 and the
number that died was 297. The number of men in the individual army corps
that contracted the disease varied greatly according to the nature and
place of their activity; particularly hard hit were the army divisions
in the south-western and northern scenes of the war, where the military
operations were carried on in fearfully cold weather, and where it was
impossible to quarter the infected soldiers in isolated places by
themselves. The French army was attacked much more severely by
small-pox, although there are no accurate reports available regarding
the prevalence of the disease. According to a report found in the
_Vienna Medical Weekly_,[262] the total number of French soldiers that
succumbed to small-pox was 23,469[263]; but the accuracy of this number,
to be sure, is questionable, since, assuming that there was a very high
mortality, it would mean that some 120,000 troops contracted the
disease. At all events, the French army, taken as a whole, was badly
infected with small-pox, and it was inevitable that among the French
prisoners brought to Germany there should be numerous small-pox
patients, some in the incubation stage, and some in the convalescent
stage of the disease, and that they should infect other people there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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