Through the influence of the works of Hildenbrand and Hufeland the larger part of the medical world of that time came to look upon contagious typhus as a specific disease; other views, however, were vigorously supported, for example, by Markus of Bamberg, who held it to be an inflammation of the brain. The difference of opinion regarding the character of the disease was important, not only theoretically, but also practically, in view of the therapeutic practice of the time; for those who regarded the disease as an inflammation of the brain had naturally, in accordance with the methods then in vogue, to resort to bleeding. But all unprejudiced observers came to the conclusion that bleeding was harmful, and that it killed all the patients upon whom it was frequently practised. Very soon the beneficial influence of fresh air and cold came to be recognized, and the latter was often provided by means of cold-water baths and douches. ‘It was a universally confirmed principle, derived from experience, that the warmer the patients were kept, the more severe was the disease, and the colder they were kept, the milder the disease.’ How beneficial fresh air was for the patients was shown by the fact that those who were kept out in the open air withstood the disease much more easily than those who were kept shut up in houses and hospitals, and that it was much less dangerous to transport patients from place to place in the open air, than to keep them shut up in overcrowded hospitals. ‘Thousands of patients’, says H. Häser,[116] ‘survived even the most severe forms of the disease without human help of any kind. Many, especially physicians, attributed their recovery to the fact that for weeks at a time they were constantly being transported in the cold winter from one halting-place to another, and were not compelled to lie in overcrowded hospitals, where typhus fever and dysentery raged most terribly.’ In dealing with the epidemic of typhus fever of the years 1812–14 we have a double epidemic to consider. The one was disseminated directly by the returning remnants of the ‘Grand Army’, and after causing terrible devastation in East Prussia it spread, in a relatively milder form, to other parts of Germany. The other epidemic broke out during the great battles in Saxony, which lasted several months, and from there spread virulently over a large part of Germany. In order to avoid repetition, the following account will treat of the dissemination of the two epidemics jointly. 2. THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN AND TYPHUS FEVER IN RUSSIA[117]