For example, if a considerable quantity of dirty clothes or linen is allowed to accumulate in a pile, and after a short time is picked up, the usual result is that the people who do the work experience a severe attack of typhus fever.’ Very often conditions made segregation impossible, even when it was desired, or else the French generals refused to permit it. Consequently, infection was so frequent in the hospitals that the disease at a very early date acquired the name ‘hôpital fever’ (fièvre d’hôpital). The fact that the weather conditions exerted some influence was not to be overlooked; in the year 1813, when the warm weather began, the disease abated a little, whereas in the year 1814 it ceased altogether at the beginning of the warm weather. The reason for this was that the cold weather forced people to huddle together in houses, and that bathing and washing, particularly among the soldiers and poor people, was less frequently and profusely indulged in; another reason was that the heavier clothing worn in winter facilitated the breeding of vermin. Failure to take measures of precaution, if the disease once broke out in a neighbouring place, also contributed greatly toward the dissemination of it. ‘If typhus fever was present in any military halting-place, frequently nothing was done to prevent it from infecting the next place, where it had not yet made its appearance; or, if anything was done, it was often merely to issue an order which was not complied with.’[113] At the same time, to be sure, one must take into account the fact that sheer ignorance rendered useful measures impossible. If this ignorance prevailed in the highest places, nothing better was to be expected of the small cities and towns. That the ‘contagious typhus’ prevalent during the Napoleonic wars was the same disease which we call typhus fever is very certain. The physicians of the middle of the nineteenth century, when views of typhus and typhoid fever had cleared up somewhat, have confirmed this fact.[114] The descriptions of the disease are almost invariably reproductions of the same picture, the sole difference being that it was much more severe and fatal among the half-starved soldiers on their return from Russia, and among soldiers packed together in strongholds, than it was among people who were less afflicted by the war and who lived at a distance from the military routes.