Switzerland was exposed to great danger in consequence of the passage of General Bourbaki’s army, which consisted partly of very young soldiers who had suffered great hardships, including cold and hunger, and which contained large numbers of men who were suffering from small-pox. The little country was called upon to take in some 85,000 men; when the latter were examined on the frontier a large number of them were found to be infected with small-pox and were held at Verrière in France. But this did not prevent the disease from being conveyed across the border. Of the French prisoners confined there, 137, all told, succumbed to small-pox. Unfortunately no mortality statistics giving the cause of death were compiled in Switzerland until the year 1876, so that we have no figures indicating the prevalence of small-pox. The western cantons were most exposed to the infection. In Berne, which at that time had a population of 506,511, no less than 2,637 persons, excluding the French prisoners interned there, contracted the disease between October 1870 and September 1872; in the year 1871 there were 9·6 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants.[293] In the city of Basel, which was attacked as early as November 1870, the epidemic reached its climax in February; the number of deaths there was as follows:[294] _Total no._ _Per 10,000 inhabitants._ 1870 7 1·6 1871 64 14·0 1872 13 2·7 The Canton of Basel (Land) was attacked somewhat less severely; in the year 1871 only 59 persons (10·9 per 10,000 inhabitants) succumbed there to small-pox. In the Canton of Solothurn, which was infected from Olten, a railway junction, 13·9 persons per 10,000 inhabitants died in the year 1871. In the Canton of Waadt small-pox broke out, according to Vogt, in the district of Vivis in November 1870, and 200 persons contracted the disease in the course of that month. In the two small-pox hospitals at Lausanne, 351 patients were treated between November 20, 1870, and the end of 1871, and 62 of them died. The small-pox epidemic spread very rapidly from the West throughout all the rest of Switzerland, partly in consequence of the distribution of the French prisoners among the other cantons, and partly in consequence of inland intercourse. Of the French prisoners interned in the Canton of Zurich 180, according to A. Brunner,[295] contracted the disease and 31 died of it. The patients were sheltered in the small-pox camp at Winterthur, whence the infection spread to many places. In February 1871 there was a rapid increase in the number of cases; the epidemic reached its climax in March and April, and then steadily abated until June. The statistics for the Canton of Zurich, which had a population of 285,915, were as follows: