‘The disease spread with no less severity from other sources of infection, such as the temporary hospitals established in the Convent of Canons of Saint Nicholas, in the Monastery of Saint Vannes, and in the barracks. The unfortunate patients, thrown in heaps on the damp stone and earth floors, scarcely having under them a few mats, or perhaps some dirty straw, filthy with their excrement, three of them often sharing a single blanket of coarse wool, presented the most dismal picture one could possibly imagine. At least three-quarters of the patients died. They were buried in huge ditches dug in the vicinity of the ramparts, and in the gardens surrounding the abbeys of Saint Vannes and of Saint Nicholas.’ The German Central Hospital Management, which was founded in the latter part of November 1813, and from which Bavaria and Württemberg held aloof, sought to introduce certain improvements into the military lazaret system, but it was unable to accomplish a great deal, owing to the lack of hospitals, physicians, and all the means necessary for the treatment of sick and injured people. Very dangerous for the dissemination of the disease was the belief that the placing of typhus fever patients together with other invalids did no harm, but rather that the congregating of numerous typhus fever patients by themselves caused the contagion to develop with especial severity. The Saxon staff surgeon Neumann, for example, writes in regard to this question:[112] ‘Anybody who lies in a bed to which the poison is still clinging will without fail contract the disease; on the other hand, I have often seen people suffering from other forms of sickness lie alongside of typhus-fever patients and escape infection, provided they had nothing in common, did not touch one another, or make use of one another’s linen. Hence I draw the conclusion that the poison of typhus fever, like the poison of bubonic plague and small-pox, cannot enter the system from a distance, not even from a very short distance, and can be communicated only by close and direct contact. This seems to contradict our experience that the intensity of the poison is greatly increased when several patients lie side by side. Accordingly, I warn all military physicians not to congregate all their typhus fever patients in a single room by themselves; for few would come forth from such a room alive, while the poisoned atmosphere of the room would pervade the entire lazaret, infect the physicians and attendants, and finally spread throughout the immediate neighbourhood. People think that they can prevent the disease from spreading by congregating and isolating the patients, but as a matter of fact this has the opposite effect. This is clear when we consider that the mere being together of unhealthy people causes the poison to develop, and that not only the people themselves, but also the very exhalations from their bodies, are sufficient to spread the infection.