In Lithuania, and East and West Prussia, typhus fever raged extensively in the winter of 1812–13. According to H. A. Göden,[[124]] who had charge of a large military lazaret in Gumbinnen, the epidemic spread continuously from the border of Russia to Berlin. ‘It appeared most virulently’, he says, ‘in the cities of Gumbinnen, Insterburg, Tilsit, Königsberg, Elbing, Marienwerder, Konitz, and Landsberg; it followed along the military roads, and broke out most severely in the halting-places and in those cities where French military lazarets were established.’ In Gumbinnen typhus fever broke out suddenly in the latter part of November, immediately after the arrival of the fugitives, and spread rapidly. At first it appeared in houses where officers and soldiers were quartered; as a rule, several members of a family contracted the disease simultaneously, and only rarely was one member spared. The pestilence raged most furiously in the months of January and February; the town had some 6,000 inhabitants, and frequently 20, 30, or 40 people, including entire families, died in a single day. In the military lazarets the mortality was considerably higher. In March the pestilence began to abate, and in May it disappeared altogether.
In Königsberg the pestilence began in the month of December 1812 and came to an end in May 1813; excluding the soldiers who died in the military lazarets, the following deaths were recorded there:
| December (1812) | 430 |
| January (1813) | 581 |
| February | 802 |
| March | 622 |
| April | 608 |
| May | 327 |
| June | 196 |
| July | 178 |
| August | 157 |
| September | 160 |
| October | 151 |
In the year 1812 there were 2,648 deaths in Königsberg, whereas in the following year there were 4,403. In the first part of January, when the city was evacuated by the French, 10,000 people, according to Stricker, were left behind. The entire province of East Prussia, according to Gurlt, lost 20,000 inhabitants by typhus fever.[[125]]
Danzig, which was besieged by the Russians from January 11 to November 29, 1813, suffered terribly. A French army of 35,900 men, under General Rapp, was in the city, and during the siege it was exposed to all sorts of privations as well as to extreme cold. As early as February typhus fever had become very widespread; from January to May, 11,400 soldiers died in the hospitals (4,000 in March alone), while 5,592 inhabitants succumbed to the disease in the course of the entire year.[[126]]
Silesia was hit extremely hard. The pestilence was conveyed there in the months of October, November, and December 1812 by transports of Russian prisoners, and it appeared in Trebnitz, Striegau, Krottkau, Friedenwalde, Trachenberg, Breslau, Parchwitz, Quaritz, &c. The officers on duty, the persons who lifted the patients from the wagons, the physicians, and the sick-attendants were always the first to be infected.[[127]] With the opening of spring the disease disappeared, but broke out anew after the battle on the Katzbach. In Breslau the disease appeared in a very virulent form, since the infected soldiers were housed there in overcrowded lazarets, which in the month of November took in some 6,300 patients daily; numerous physicians (statements vary between 16 and 22) also succumbed to typhus fever. Among the civil inhabitants, to be sure, the disease did not become very widespread; out of a population of 62,789, only 3,055 died in the year 1812, 3,095 in the year 1813, and 3,301 in the year 1814. From the middle of September 1813 to February 1814, 478 civilians and some 1,800 soldiers succumbed in Breslau to typhus fever; the total number of soldiers that died between the middle of September and the beginning of March was 3,400.[[128]] In the governmental district of Liegnitz, having a population of 600,000, according to Kausch[[129]] only 13 physicians (excluding the surgeons) died. The disease was borne by transports of infected soldiers into other parts of Silesia, and at the end of the year 1813 all the military lazarets in Silesia were infected. In Waldenburg and vicinity (Obersalzbrunn, &c.) typhus fever broke out after the soldiers had marched through on October 20 and November 25, 1813, and seventeen days later the disease was very widespread, all the members of many families having contracted it. In Bunzlau typhus fever raged with unusual fury; in the military lazaret 12,000 men are said to have died between June 1813 and March 1814.
Presently typhus fever appeared, with the arrival of the remnants of the Grand Army, in regions further away from the Russian border. Häser[[130]] describes the manner in which the disease spread, always along military roads, as follows:
‘French soldiers returning from Russia’, he says, ‘spread the contagion of various diseases over a large part of Central Europe. Almost naked, or clothed in torn and half-burned rags, without shoes, their feet covered with straw, and their frozen limbs covered with festering sores, they marched through Poland and Germany. Typhus fever and other diseases associated with it marked their course. The inhabitants of the country were forced to house the sick; but teamsters also conveyed the infection to villages which the soldiers did not visit. The disease raged most furiously in the hospitals, which scarcely anywhere were able to meet even the most modest demands made upon them.’
Regarding the appearance of typhus fever in Berlin we are informed by Hufeland and Horn.[[131]] First to occur there (in the months of February and March 1813) were numerous cases of ‘nervous fever’, which was doubtless typhoid fever. Still it is likely that cases of typhus fever also occurred at that time, for Horn, in writing about ‘nervous fevers’ in the Charité, describes the exanthema with the same words that Hufeland uses in reference to later cases. Among these patients there were already some who had returned from Russia.[[132]] At all events, in the first part of March 1813 there occurred cases of contagious typhus, which was brought to Berlin by French, and later by Russian soldiers; the observed ways of infection, regarding which Hufeland informs us, are mentioned above. In the middle of April there were 246 typhus-fever patients in the Charité. In order to prevent the disease from spreading in this hospital, Hufeland adopted strict measures of precaution. The patients were all carefully isolated on the second floor, which was shut off by means of a grating. The newly-arrived patients were supplied with clean, fresh linen, their clothing was disinfected for several days in hydrochloric acid, and then washed in boiling water containing lye, while objects of no value were burned. The sick-rooms were constantly ventilated by leaving the windows open, and were thoroughly cleaned every day. The physicians, surgeons, and attendants, before they entered the sick-rooms, had to put on black mantles of glazed linen, and on leaving the rooms they had to wash their hands and faces in cold water and rinse out their mouths. In this way the disease was prevented from spreading in the hospital itself.
After the battle of Leipzig typhus fever broke out anew in Berlin; according to Horn, 144 cases of ‘nerve fever’ were received into the Charité in January 1814, 92 in February, 54 in March, 14 in April, 8 in May, and none in June. Regarding the total mortality in the epidemic of typhus fever in Berlin, which in the year 1813 had about 155,000 inhabitants, the following table, compiled by Gurlt,[[133]] gives us information; there died in: