Measles of a particularly malignant type has prevailed. Its fatality has doubtless been increased by the exhausted and semi-starved condition in which many of the Boers and their children have arrived at the camps. It has been impossible to isolate such cases in the camps; and the crude and ignorant and even mischievous methods of domestic treatment adopted by the Boer women have doubtless increased the evil, as have also the personal uncleanliness of the Boers and their fear of fresh air as well as of clean water. But, as previously pointed out, enteric fever and diarrhoea and dysentery have claimed a large toll of victims, and for the excessive amount of these the deficient sanitary control of the camps must be held in a large measure responsible. With the arrival of the better season, when the Concentration Camps, under the pressure of public opinion, were thoroughly cleansed, the condition of health improved. Hönigsberger,[312] who inspected the camp at Merebank (in Natal) in May 1912, derived a very favourable impression; notwithstanding the fact that the camp lay on low ground near the sea-coast, where the soil was necessarily damp, there was no visible surface water because of an effective system of drainage. The drinking-water facilities were good. Of some 8,000 refugees sheltered there only 110 died between the months of February and May 1902. 3. THE WAR IN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA (1904–7)[313] In the very first year of the war, typhoid fever broke out with great severity. The disease first made its appearance in the war against the Herero nation in the first part of April 1904; it attacked the eastern division of the army, which was commanded by Major von Glasenapp and numbered twenty-five officers and 509 men, in Onjatu (midway between Windhuk and Waterberg), after the soldiers had been exposed to rainy weather, cold nights, and extreme hardship. On April 6 there were six cases of the disease reported, and by April 16 the number of cases had increased to sixty-six; the division was then transferred to Otjihaenena, where the patients were housed in permanent lazarets and the healthy men were quarantined. Throughout the remaining part of the war, typhoid fever played an important rôle; the total number of deaths in the years 1904–7 was 1,491; of these 689 succumbed to diseases, 439 of them to typhoid fever. The soldiers who fought in the battles against the Hereros were most severely attacked; of a total of 470 deaths 283 were caused by typhoid fever and only twenty-two by other diseases. In the three years’ struggle against the Hottentots some 1,200 soldiers died; 375 of them died of diseases; of the 375 typhoid fever was responsible for 156. 4. THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR OF 1904–5