Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
Typhus fever and other infectious diseases raged furiously in Magdeburg,
and, as before, the country south-west of Magdeburg also suffered. In
Gross-Salze, which had received many fugitives, 701 persons succumbed in
the year 1636 to dysentery and bubonic plague, among them 329 outsiders;
the climax of the pestilence occurred in July, when there were 162
deaths. In Egeln, as in Gross-Salze, a plague broke out in May 1636,
carrying away 164 persons (134 of them outsiders) in June, 63 natives
and 84 outsiders in July. In Wolmirsleben a pestilence raged from April
to the middle of September 1636, and carried away 130 people. In
Atzendorf typhus fever and bubonic plague broke out in the spring of the
year 1636 and carried away 617 persons, inclusive of outsiders. In
Wanzleben 600 persons succumbed in the year 1636 to bubonic plague, and
300 to other diseases and starvation. In Aschersleben a pestilence broke
out on April 2, 1636, reached a climax in November with 217 deaths, and
carried away, all told, 1,125 persons in that year (including 499
outsiders and soldiers). In Zerbst, where infected soldiers were
quartered, the epidemic was particularly widespread; of the fugitives in
the city 1,500 succumbed. In Wittenberg and vicinity dysentery and
typhus fever broke out in the year 1636, and in the fall of that year
bubonic plague also made its appearance and lasted well into the
following year, carrying away thousands of people. In Merseburg, in the
parish of St. Maximus alone, there were 942 deaths in the years 1636–7,
and in Eisleben there were 1,598 deaths (including the outsiders) in the
year 1636. Halle and vicinity, in the summer of 1636, had an outbreak of
‘spotted fever with dysentery’ and bubonic plague; the number of deaths
was not less than 3,440.
In Thuringia a plague raged extensively in the years 1636–7. In
Hildburghausen there were 648 deaths due to a plague in the year 1636,
in Jena 691 (not including the outsiders), while in the year 1637 there
were 307 deaths in Arnstadt and 525 in Zeitz. In many smaller places
dysentery and bubonic plague broke out, having been borne there by
soldiers and wandering beggars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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