The above compilation leaves no doubt that the disease was borne into Germany from France. The contagion was conveyed into Germany by prisoners and field-soldiers, some of whom were infected beforehand and were sick when they got there, others of whom were still apparently healthy, and still others of whom had reached the convalescent stage of the disease, and less frequently by civil persons (teamsters and fugitives); but the prisoners were by far the most active influence in spreading the disease. The dissemination usually took place in the following manner; in the dépôts where the prisoners were confined, small-pox epidemics of varying severity broke out; from all sides the people streamed in to see the prisoners, and when they went away they conveyed the infection wherever they went, at first, of course, around in the immediate vicinity. This is most evident in the eastern provinces, where these dépôts soon came to be dangerous seats of small-pox infection; the near-by districts were very severely attacked as early as the year 1871, whereas the more remote districts did not begin to suffer severely until the year 1872. The development of a small trade between the prisoners and civil inhabitants in articles belonging to dead soldiers, or in personal effects, also helped to spread the disease; moreover, certain unscrupulous sick-attendants, when they were instructed to destroy such articles, frequently disobeyed the order and secretly sold them, thereby giving an additional impetus to the dissemination of the disease. The fact that a large part of the population was not vaccinated, and that the necessity of revaccination was not properly recognized (only soldiers were revaccinated), also helped to increase the severity of the pestilence. In all the South German States compulsory vaccination had existed for decades, but its strict enforcement was everywhere hindered by the activity of the anti-vaccinationists; Prussia and Saxony did not introduce compulsory vaccination until the year 1874. Revaccination among the civil inhabitants was rarely practised in either North or South Germany. These differences in the vaccination laws account for the fact that small-pox raged more severely in North Germany than in South Germany; this is also distinctly shown by the tables reproduced in the course of this chapter. The fact that the civil inhabitants in general were more thoroughly vaccinated also explains why the percentage of children that succumbed to small-pox was so much smaller in South Germany than in North Germany.