4. The Appearance of Typhus Fever in South Germany
Typhus fever was conveyed to various places throughout South Germany by the few soldiers that returned from Russia. Nowhere did it become very widespread, since the authorities soon realized its dangers and prevented it from spreading by means of appropriate measures of precaution. A change took place, however, after the battle of Leipzig, when large numbers of fugitive and captive French soldiers came into the country, and when troops, particularly Russians, kept constantly marching back and forth across the country and spreading the infection. Another important cause of the appearance of the disease there was the fact that lazarets were erected in South Germany during the campaign in France, for the purpose of sheltering the sick and wounded soldiers that were transported back from France.
Regarding the dissemination of typhus fever in Bavaria we are very well informed in a dissertation by F. Seitz.[[159]] As among other divisions of troops, so also among the Bavarian division, typhus fever raged extensively. On the march from the Vistula to the Oder thirty or forty men contracted the disease every day, and some of them also suffered from diarrhoea, dysentery, and other diseases; so that when Crossen-on-the-Oder was reached only 113 officers and 2,253 men were left. During the sojourn in Crossen and during the march through Saxony in March, the number of the patients increased, and by the middle of March there were only 1,000 able-bodied men left. Thus they arrived at the Bavarian border. ‘The rumour of the wide prevalence of nerve-fever in North Germany,’ says Seitz, ‘and the apprehension that the disease might be conveyed into Bavaria by soldiers returning from the field of battle, had preceded the arrival of the first warriors. Nevertheless people did not wish to forgo the pleasure of sheltering in their homes the soldiers, who had been exposed to so many hardships and privations, and of helping them to forget their past troubles; and in performing this philanthropic duty they lost sight of the necessary caution which prudence demanded.’
The infection of an entire family in Regensburg by a soldier discharged from the hospital (in February 1813), and reports regarding infection in other places, resulted in the adoption of strict measures in the border-towns. All returning soldiers, if it was suspected that they were infected with disease, were examined by a commission, and if the suspicion was confirmed by this commission, they were not allowed to be quartered in the homes of citizens, but were obliged to find shelter in barracks and lazarets, or in suitable buildings outside the town. Patients were sent to the military hospitals of Bayreuth, Bamberg, and Plassenburg (near Kulmbach); as soon as these hospitals were filled up, a new one was erected in Altdorf. Strict isolation of the patients was enforced, and this prevented the further dissemination of the disease among the civil inhabitants. To be sure, a few people contracted the disease after coming in contact with soldiers; for example, in Amberg, Sulzbach, Burglengenfeld, Grafenau, Cham, Nuremberg, &c. On the other hand, there were a great many typhus-fever patients in the military hospitals, especially in Bamberg. There typhus fever caused a high mortality among the soldiers; but, thanks to strict measures of precaution, only a few civilians were taken sick (about 100 out of 20,000 inhabitants), while of several physicians that contracted the disease only two succumbed to it. About the middle of the year 1813 typhus fever disappeared in Bavaria, without having demanded many victims. The ‘nerve-fevers’, which were prevalent during the summer (for example, in Regensburg from July to September), are not regarded by Schäfer as contagious, and must be looked upon as cases of typhoid fever.
In November, on the other hand, after the battles near Leipzig and Hanau, typhus fever broke out suddenly in many places in Bavaria, and in December raged furiously. The orders, issued in the spring of 1813, prohibiting all persons suspected of carrying disease from crossing the borders could no longer be enforced. Says Seitz:[[160]] ‘When French prisoners began to march across the country on their way from Saxony and Würzburg to Bohemia, the pestilence spread among the inhabitants of the cities and of the flat lands. Typhus fever raged in its most terrible form among these poor prisoners of war; many succumbed to it in various places along the route, and thousands died in the hospitals. That the disease, which haunted all defeated armies like a ghost, would necessarily reap an abundant harvest among them, was clear to every physician who observed the physiognomies of these warriors as they were being led away in captivity from the vicinity of their fatherland into remote regions. Their pale faces and emaciated forms bore witness to hunger and sorrow, to a long deprivation of the usual necessaries of life and to lack of vital energy, to exhaustion caused by the long marches from Hanau to Leipzig, when in the ardent struggle to reach their fatherland they had used up their last ounce of strength. Whosoever was brought by profession, sentiment, or curiosity into contact with these unfortunate soldiers sooner or later contracted the disease. Physicians, police-officers, servants, national guards (who watched over the prisoners), country-people (who carried the patients), messengers (who brought food to the soldiers in their quarters), were as a rule the first to be attacked.’
The Grand Duchy of Würzburg was next attacked. In Würzburg itself, where there were 2,000 or 3,000 French patients in the hospitals, the pestilence broke out furiously wherever the soldiers went. In Miltenburg more than 100 persons contracted the disease in the latter part of December; in the district of Mellrichstadt the number of typhus-fever patients was 429 (121 deaths), and in the district of Bischofsheim there were 1,067 patients and 328 deaths. According to Seitz, the number of deaths throughout the entire Grand Duchy of Würzburg, which at that time had a population of 344,500, was 2,500, while no less than 16,000 people contracted the disease. In Nuremberg the pestilence did not become very widespread; it broke out in the first part of November and lasted until the middle of January; 150 persons, all told, contracted the disease. Dinkelsbühl was severely attacked; in the month of November a large number of French prisoners suffering from typhus fever and diarrhoea were housed there in the Carmelite Monastery, and in a short time some 200 of them died. Between the 25th and 30th of November typhus fever spread to the civil population, and, in a few days, more than 100 people contracted the disease and 10 died; the number of patients increased until December 12, and then decreased, until the pestilence disappeared in the latter part of January; 448 persons, all told, contracted the disease and 89 succumbed to it. In the middle of November it was conveyed by a transport of French prisoners to Bamberg, where it spread with such fearful rapidity in the military hospital there, that twenty persons died every day and all the sick-attendants and medical assistants contracted it. The disease soon spread throughout the city, even infecting people who had in no way come in contact with the sick prisoners. Epidemics of typhus fever were reported in twenty-one villages in the surrounding country.
All Upper Franconia, through which transports of prisoners were taken to the Bohemian border, suffered terribly from the pestilence. The disease was first observed in the towns and villages lying to the north of Bamberg, whither it had been conveyed by dispersed troops immediately after the battle of Leipzig (in Nordhalben, Hof, and other near-by villages). Later on it also appeared in the districts further south. The region between Bayreuth and Münchberg was, comparatively speaking, less severely attacked. On the other hand, typhus fever raged furiously in the military hospital on the Plassenburg, where at the end of December there were some 700 persons suffering from the disease. In Kulmbach, a town lying at the foot of the mountain, more than 100 persons contracted the disease.
While French prisoners were bringing typhus fever into the country from the west, Austrian and Russian troops were also bringing it from the east. To be sure, the authorities were enjoined to restrict the foreign troops to the use of ten military roads that passed through the country, but the Austrian and Russian leaders frequently ignored these instructions. Consequently the pestilence spread over the entire region, a fact which Seitz confirms with numerous specific instances; regarding the extent to which it raged in Munich, he gives us no information.
Typhus fever was conveyed to Regensburg by French prisoners. ‘Toward the end of the month [December],’ says Schäfer,[[161]] ‘typhus fever was conveyed to Regensburg by French prisoners, some of them sick and some of them well, but all of them scantily clad and half-starved. They were quartered in the dance-halls, and those that were sick were taken to a convent which had been hastily converted into a hospital. There the civil inhabitants, owing to the lack of appropriate arrangements, were obliged to distribute food among the sick, and the result was that the fever finally became general. Not until then was the advice which the physicians had given at the beginning heeded; they had urged, namely, that the patients should be cared for by the hospital-attendants themselves, that each one should have his own separate attendant, and that only those persons should be allowed to enter the hospital whose presence was absolutely necessary.’ By February, according to the official report, 308 persons, all told, contracted typhus fever in Regensburg, and 51 succumbed to it.
In Ingolstadt an unusually severe epidemic broke out after the arrival of the French prisoners. In the first part of December the number of prisoners that died every day was no less than ninety, but after the middle of the month the mortality was somewhat lower. On December 18 there were 845 typhus-fever patients in the hospitals, and the number of deaths on this day amounted to only twenty-seven. From then to the end of the month only fifteen or twenty persons died per diem. On December 10 several civilians contracted the disease; on December 18 the number of civilians suffering from the disease was thirty-six, and about an equal number on December 30. The total number of deaths among the prisoners of war amounted to 2,000. Typhus fever also appeared along the Danube on both sides of Ingolstadt.
In the course of the winter, typhus fever was also borne into southern Bavaria by Austrian troops; it broke out in the towns along the military road, e.g., in Vöcklabruck, Traunstein, Rosenheim, and Landsberg. Places which the soldiers did not visit were also attacked by the pestilence. In Weilheim (west of Lake Starnberg) the disease broke out repeatedly after soldiers had marched through the place; up to April 8 no less than 885 persons had contracted the disease there, and some 100 had succumbed to it.
According to Seitz, 18,427 cases of the disease and 3,084 deaths attributable to it were officially recorded in Bavaria between October 1813 and June 1814; the lists kept by the Governmental Districts were undoubtedly very incomplete, but on the other hand we must assume that the contagious and non-contagious ‘nerve-fevers’ (typhus and typhoid) were not always distinguished. For the several districts Seitz furnishes us with the following figures relating to the number of people who contracted and succumbed to typhus fever:
| The Region of the | No. Patients. | No. Deaths. |
|---|---|---|
| Main | 5,752 | 1,067 |
| Rezat | 2,135 | 32 |
| Regen | 1,627 | 290 |
| Upper Danube | 4,613 | 1,003 |
| Lower Danube | 1,338 | 270 |
| Salzach | 1,815 | 259 |
| Isar | 1,147 | 163 |
This does not include the number of deaths among the prisoners of war, nor among the native and foreign soldiers. For the Main region, Seitz also furnishes figures relating to the age of the patients; of the 5,752 persons who contracted the disease 453 were children, 1,345 were young men and women, 3,657 were of middle age, and 297 were old men and women.
As in Bavaria, so also in Württemberg, typhus fever broke out in two epidemics; the first, which was less extensive and less severe, was caused by soldiers returning from Russia, and the second broke out in consequence of the passing of troops through the country after the battle of Leipzig. According to Elsässer,[[162]] in the first part of the year 1813 there were 165 cases of typhus fever and twenty deaths due to it reported from fifteen different localities. In the month of July the disease disappeared from Württemberg. At the end of the year 1813, however, the disease was again borne into the country, partly by French prisoners, and partly by Russian soldiers. ‘Throughout Württemberg’, says Lohnes,[[163]] ‘this fever appeared wherever foreign troops had tarried. Consequently contagious typhus first appeared in the northern lowlands, while the region around Tübingen and the southern and eastern part of the country at the beginning did not suffer at all. But in December, when large bodies of troops marched through the highlands, the southern part of Württemberg, these fevers followed the soldiers’ lines of march. At first it was the French prisoners who carried lazaret-fever with them wherever they went, and a very severe form of the disease too; later on, these fevers always broke out wherever the Russian soldiers went, although very few of the soldiers themselves were infected with them. Frequently persons contracted the disease who had no sick soldiers in their homes. As a rule the disease in such cases was mild, but it was very dangerous wherever patients were left or congregated in large or small hospitals.’
As early as the month of February, the disease had reached its climax in Württemberg; in March it began to abate rapidly, so that in the first part of the summer only 150 patients could be counted in fifteen Governmental Districts. From then until the end of the year it broke out only sporadically. Braun,[[164]] who asserts that more than half of the physicians in Württemberg contracted typhus fever, mentions the names and residences of seventeen physicians who succumbed to it; we see from this list that the disease was prevalent throughout all Württemberg. The disease was also conveyed to the southern part of Upper Swabia. According to Dillenius, 1,300 sick soldiers were sent in the first part of the year 1814 from France (especially from Mülhausen in Alsace) to the military hospital at Tettnang; twenty-four of them died on the way, and in the course of the following four months five times as many succumbed to typhus fever in the hospital.[[165]]
Baden suffered severely from typhus fever; in Karlsruhe, for instance, typhus fever raged from October to December 1813. But Baden suffered particularly, for the reason that all the sick soldiers in the Bohemian army were sent back there from France. Their number far exceeded all expectations, since typhus fever was uncommonly prevalent in the field army in France, and the soldiers arriving from there infected the hospitals. Even when the Austrian and Russian troops marched through the country the number of ‘nerve-fever’ patients was very large. Freiburg im Breisgau, at that time a city of 9,000 inhabitants, suffered very severely in consequence of enforced quartering; some 210,000 soldiers were housed in the homes of its citizens. In the garrison lazaret and university hospital, which together had room for 500 patients, no less than 1,200 patients were crowded together in December 1813; almost all of them were suffering from diarrhoea and typhus, and owing to the lack of linen they were compelled to lie in their own dirty clothes on sacks of straw. Every morning two large wagonloads of dead bodies were driven away for burial. As usual, the pestilence spread to the civil population, carrying away entire families. On October 12, 1813, the former Abbey of Thennenbach was converted into a military lazaret, in which two weeks later some 1,200 patients were sheltered, although it had adequate room for only 700. Between December 27, 1813, and March 1814, 567 soldiers succumbed there, most of them to typhus and dysentery. The epidemic reached its climax about the middle of January, when as many as thirty persons died per diem. After the middle of January the number of deaths rapidly decreased.[[166]] Northern Baden was also attacked. In Mannheim the sick and wounded French soldiers who arrived after the battles of Lützen and Bautzen were led around the city and taken to Spires. Thus typhus fever did not appear in Mannheim itself, where the condition of health was subsequently also good. The statement of the Rheinische Merkur, that out of 13,000 patients in the military lazarets in Mannheim 3,347 died, according to Gurlt,[[167]] is incorrect; the number of deaths was no more than 346.
Regarding the total number of deaths due to typhus fever in Baden no information is available; at all events it was very large. This is shown by the fact that in the last part of 1813 and first part of 1814 no less than thirty-five physicians and thirty surgeons of the first class fell victims to the pestilence.[[168]]
In November 1813, thousands of scattered French prisoners came to Darmstadt; many of them were suffering from typhus fever, which soon spread throughout the city. Many places in that part of the present Grand Duchy of Hesse which lies south of the Main were severely attacked by the epidemic; as many as 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants of many places contracted the disease. But by July 5, 1814, it had everywhere disappeared.[[169]]