Zymotic diseases : their correlation and causation / By A. Wolff.

  • Wolff, Abraham, 1819-1892.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Zymotic diseases : their correlation and causation / By A. Wolff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    cliison tells us tliat in many parts of Europe, where typhus rarely occurs in time of peace, it becomes epidemic in time of war. The two conditions essen- tial for the origin and diffusion of zymotic disease are rarely absent from camps and besieged cities:— 1st. The overcrowding of men and horses under necessarily unfavourable hygienic conditions, subjects soldiers to the influence of the disease-producing cause, and the scarcity and mental and bodily depression engendered amongst the inhabitants of the war-ravaged country favour the diffusion of the disease in the form of epidemic.* “ During the whole period of the revolutionary wars, typhus followed in the march of the French armies, and spread along their route. In the cam- paigns of 1804—9 typhus did not spare a single village on the route from Strasbourg to Vienna; and in 1812 the long line from Mayence to Vienna was in like manner infected/’’—Williams. The dreadful sufferings of the French army from typhus during its retreat from Russia in 1812 are well known. “In 1813 there perished by typhus in Dantzic * “ The soldiers of the French army during their retreat from Italy in 1799 communicated fever to the inhabitants of fifteen towns and villages where they halted on their route. The soldiers suffered from privations of every kind. They were ill-fed, their clothes were in tatters, their bodies were covered with filth and exhaled a noxious smell, and their shirts, unchanged for many months, were glued to their skin.”—Williams.