Armies -- Medical and sanitary affairs; Epidemics -- History; Medicine, Military -- History; Military hygiene
French prisoners also conveyed typhus fever to Bavaria. According to
Seitz,[83] this was the case, for example in Regensburg, where the
disease raged furiously in December 1793. ‘There is no doubt,’ he says,
‘that the germ of this disease was brought there by French captives,
since many contracted the disease and succumbed to it on the
transport-ships on which they were carried; and Schäffer (a physician in
Regensburg) also saw many people contract the fever who had come in
contact with them.’ Typhus fever was disseminated all along the
Danube—Donauwörth, Neuburg, Ingolstadt, Vohburg, Kehlheim, Donaustauf,
Pfatter, Straubing, Deggendorf, and other places. Kulmbach was also
infected by the French soldiers.
During the Coalition War violent conflicts took place in western France
in the Vendée, where the Royalist population had risen against the new
potentates. When Nantes was besieged by the Royalists in 1793, a furious
outbreak of typhus fever occurred in that city.[84] The prisons and
hospitals were greatly overcrowded, the city was filled with dirt which
nobody took the trouble to remove, and many carcasses were left
unburied. In the latter part of September the disease broke out in the
prison of Saintes-Claires, where the prisoners were very closely packed
together. According to le Borgne, the official inspector said of this
prison: ‘Tout manquait dans cette maison—l’air, l’eau, les aliments, les
remèdes, tout jusqu’aux moyens d’ensevelir et d’enterrer les morts.’
(Everything was lacking in the building—air, water, food, remedies, and
even the means for covering and burying the dead.) Without beds, without
even straw, the prisoners had to lie on the damp ground and be scantily
fed on bad bread and water. Regarding the Le Bouffay Prison, we read:
‘Des morts, des mourants, et des prisonniers nouvellement infectés
gisent sur le même grabat! Les cachots répandent des miasmes putrides,
et les lumières s’éteignent lorsqu’on entre dans ces cloaques empestés!’
(Dead, dying, and recently infected prisoners lie on the same pallet!
The cells reek with putrid miasma, and the lights go out when one enters
these pestilential sewers.) And regarding the L’Entrepôt Prison we read:
‘La maladie était si intense à L’Entrepôt que, de 22 sentinelles qui y
montèrent la garde, 21 périrent en très peu de jours, et que les membres
du Conseil de salubrité, qui eurent le triste courage d’y aller, en
furent presque tous les victimes.’ (The disease was so intense at
L’Entrepôt, that twenty-one out of twenty-two sentinels who went on duty
there died within a very few days, and almost all the members of the
Board of Health who had the sad courage to go there fell victims to it.)
The hospitals were so crowded that three or four persons were obliged to
occupy the same bed. After December the disease also spread to the city;
of 300 grave-diggers employed by the Revolutionary Committee, the
majority were taken sick and many died. The total number of deaths in
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