Wherever, as in Breslau, there were few prisoners, the small-pox percentage in the immobile army is low. Regarding the above figures, it must be remarked that those pertaining to the garrisons were compiled on the basis of the average number of troops, whereas in the case of the French prisoners the maximum number was used as a basis. The relative number of small-pox cases in the latter table, accordingly, is somewhat too low. Among the prisoners and among the immobile troops, the climax of the pestilence was in January, as indicated by the following table: _French Prisoners._ _Immobile German troops._ July (1870) 2 16 August 27 9 September 85 47 October 273 49 November 1,041 128 December 3,107 358 January (1871) 4,139 802 February 3,151 719 March 1,521 457 April 586 451 May 209 291 June 36 145 The number of French prisoners taken to Germany in the month of July 1870 was small. Of the sixteen immobiles who contracted the disease during that month, nine belonged to the Ninth Army Corps, most of them having been infected inland before the outbreak of the war. That the month of July did not constitute the starting-point of the subsequent epidemic is evident from the fact that the prevalence of the disease decreased in August, as well as from countless individual observations. 4. _The Epidemic of Small-pox in the Civil Population of Germany in 1871–2_ In the summer of 1870 Germany was almost free from small-pox. Later on, thousands of French prisoners, almost all of them hailing from infected localities, were within a short time scattered throughout the entire German Empire, and since the inhabitants of many parts of the country, as stated above, were very insufficiently vaccinated, it was inevitable that epidemics of small-pox should break out everywhere. The disease was disseminated in several ways: by prisoners who had contracted it on their way to Germany, or who had to be transported from an infected to an uninfected locality, by persons into whose systems the infection had entered but had not yet revealed its presence, and by uninfected persons who had come in contact with infected persons; numerous persons, moreover, contracted the disease by handling the clothing, blankets, and other effects of small-pox patients.