While the Westphalians guarded the battle-field the army marched to Moscow, exhausted, starving, finding new sufferings every day. On the road from Moshaisk to Moscow they encountered frightful conditions in the villages which were filled with wounded Russians. These unfortunates, abandoned to cruel privations, dying as much from starvation as from their wounds, excited pity. The water even was scarce, and when a source was discovered it was generally polluted, soiled with all sorts of filth, infected by cadavers; but all this did not prevent the soldiers from drinking it with great avidity, and they fought among themselves to approach it. All these details have to be known before studying typhus in the grand army.
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The description of diseases given by the physicians who lived a century ago is for us unsatisfactory; we cannot understand what they meant by their vague designating of hepatitis, fibrous enteritis, diarrhoea and dysentery, peripneumonia, remittent and intermittent gastric fever, protracted nervous fever, typhus and synochus; there is no distinction made in any of the writings of that period between abdominal and exanthematic typhus.
However, before long physicians will discard much from our present medical onomatology that is ridiculous, absurd, incorrect, in short, unscientific, as, for instance, the designation typhoid fever.
Ebstein has pointed out all that is obscure to us in the reports of the physicians of the Russian campaign; for instance, that we cannot distinguish what is meant by the different forms of fever. According to the views of those times fever was itself a disease per se; when reaction was predominating it was called synocha, typhus when weakness was the feature, and in case of a combination of synocha and typhus it was called synochus, a form in which there was at first an inflammatory and later on a typhoid stage, but which form could not be distinguished exactly from typhus. From all the descriptions in the reports of the Russian campaign it can be deduced that many of the cases enumerated were of exanthematic typhus, notwithstanding that the symptomatology given is very incomplete, not to speak of the pathological anatomy. The only writer who has described necropsies is von Scherer. Some of the physicians speak only of the sick and the diseases, as Bourgeois, who says that on the march to Russia during the sultry weather the many cadavers of horses putrefied rapidly, filling the air with miasms, and that this caused much disease; further, in describing the retreat he only says that the army was daily reduced in consequence of the constant fighting, the privations and diseases, without enumerating which diseases were prevailing; only in a note attached to his booklet he mentions that the most frequent of the ravaging diseases of that time and during the Russian campaign in general was typhus, and there can be no doubt it was petechial or exanthematic typhus, for which the English literature has the vague name typhus fever.
Very interesting are the historical data given by Ebstein: “As is well known, the fourth and most severe typhus period of the eighteenth century began with the wars of the French revolution and ended only during the second decade of the nineteenth century with the downfall of the Napoleonic empire and the restoration of peace in Germany.” During the Russian campaign the conditions for spreading the disease were certainly the most favorable imaginable.
Krantz, whom I shall quote later on, has described the ophthalmy prevailing in York’s corps as being of a mild character.
Quite different forms reigned among the soldiers on their retreat from Moscow.
The description of the death from frost given by von Scherer is similar to that given by Bourgeois. The men staggered as if drunk, their faces were red and swollen, it looked as if all their blood had risen into their head. Powerless they dropped, as if paralyzed, the arms were hanging down, the musket fell out of their hands. The moment they lost their strength tears came to their eyes, repeatedly they arose, apparently deprived of their senses, and stared shy and terror-stricken at their surroundings. The physiognomy, the spasmodic contractions of the muscles of the face, manifested the cruel agony which they suffered. The eyes were very red, and drops of blood trickled from the conjunctiva. Without exaggeration it could be said of these unfortunates that they shed bloody tears. These severe forms of ophthalmy caused by extreme cold would have ended in gangraene of the affected parts if death had not relieved the misery of these unfortunates.
But Bourgeois describes another very severe form of ophthalmy among the soldiers which caused total blindness. It appeared when the army on its retreat was in the vicinity of Orscha, attacked many soldiers and resembled the ophthalmy which was prevailing in Egypt; there it was caused by the heated sand reflecting powerfully the rays of the sun; here, by the glaring white snow likewise reflecting the rays of the sun. Bourgeois considers as predisposing moments the smoke of the camp-fires, the want of sleep, the marching during the night, and describes the affection as follows: The conjunctiva became dark red, swelled together with the eyelids; there was a greatly exaggerated lachrymal secretion associated with severe pain; the eyes were constantly wet, the photophobia reached such a degree that the men became totally blind, suffered most excruciating pain and fell on the road.