Many have contended that the epidemic of small-pox which ravaged a large part of Europe, from the year 1870 on, was not a consequence of the Franco-German War, but an independent outcome of unknown conditions that were particularly favourable to the dissemination of the disease. The main argument used to uphold this contention is that epidemics of small-pox had occurred in all the states in the years before the war, without having gained such irresistible headway, and that the disease had broken out in the form of epidemics in many parts of Germany and the neighbouring countries even in the first half of the year 1870. But to refute this argument it can be clearly shown through Guttstadt’s instructive compilation of data that the German epidemic was in countless instances, in the case of Prussia as well as in that of other states in the German Confederation, brought about by the transplantation of the disease from France. Whenever small-pox broke out anywhere in times of peace, it was possible to keep the disease localized, through isolation of patients and the vaccination of the inhabitants of all regions in which fugitives from pestilence took refuge. In the year 1870, on the other hand, the contagion of small-pox was spread throughout all Germany in a few months; the increased intercourse caused by the war, together with the habit the Germans had of visiting the prisons where the French soldiers were confined, also helped to spread the disease in all directions. For Germany this disastrous epidemic, which throughout the German Empire, including the Imperial Provinces, carried away upwards of 170,000 persons, had just one good result—it led to the passing of a law in the year 1874 which rendered vaccination compulsory. ‘Besides taking thousands of human lives the epidemic also caused considerable economic loss; the care of the sick and the measures adopted to prevent the disease from spreading necessitated large expenditures of money, while large numbers of working-men contracted the disease and were thus incapacitated for a long time; furthermore, the disease left unnumerable sickly people, who had to be further supported, and at the same time the fear of infection interfered with commercial intercourse. Those who managed to escape infection, or to recover from an attack of the disease, naturally wished to run no more risks in the future, or to expose the welfare of their families to danger or destruction.’[303]