5. Typhus Fever on the Left Bank of the Rhine; France and Switzerland
The continued retreat of the French army passed from Mayence through Metz to Paris, and the route of the retreat was marked by patients left behind. In this way the epidemic of typhus fever was quickly transplanted to the north-eastern part of France. Alsace-Lorraine, the Palatinate, Champagne, and Burgundy were all attacked in succession. The epidemic raged from Kreuznach to Strassburg; the dispersion of the retreating army caused even the smallest villages to suffer, so that the pestilence appeared in Worms, Frankenthal, Spires, Oppenheim, Neustadt-on-the-Hardt, Dürkheim, Landau, Alzey, Trabach, Zweibrücken, Weissenburg, Hagenau, Zabern, and in other places. Mörs (near Frankenthal) was almost completely wiped out.[[170]] The following places in France are mentioned as having been attacked by the pestilence: Saint-Avold, Courcelles-Chaussy, Mars-la-Tour, Sierck, Cattenom, Pont-à-Mousson, Toul, Nancy, Étain, Verdun, Bar, Longwy, and Sedan. Thouvenel describes the epidemic of typhus fever in Pont-à-Mousson, which broke out in December 1813, when transports of sick soldiers arrived there, and spread to all the surrounding towns and villages; it increased in severity until the middle of March, and by June had almost disappeared. He describes in emotional language the endless succession of wagons that arrived every day:[[171]]
Who of us will not remember as long as he lives those harrowing scenes, which one cannot describe without shuddering? Who will ever forget those hundreds of wagons filled with unhappy wounded men who had had no medical care since leaving Leipzig; and packed in with them were sick men suffering from dysentery, typhus fever, &c., almost all of them dying of inanition, weakness, and filth, as well as of disease. Those unfortunate men piteously begged only for a place in a hospital already filled with dying men, only to receive in reply a forced refusal. And so they were under the cruel necessity of going further to die, with the result that they infected all the towns and villages along their route, wherever they were granted a generous hospitality.
Strassburg, comparatively speaking, suffered but little. As early as December 1, the prefect of Strassburg had issued orders that a special building should be set aside in every town for the reception of sick soldiers that arrived there, and that they should under no circumstances be housed in the homes of citizens. In October and November convalescents had been quartered in the residences of citizens, who had subsequently been infected. In November the number of typhus-fever patients, which averaged ten or fifteen per month, increased to thirty-six, and in December to 100. In accordance with the above-mentioned decree all newly-arrived soldiers were examined by a Board of Health; the sick were sent to the hospital, and the healthy were quartered with citizens. ‘Notwithstanding this,’ says Reisseisen,[[172]] ‘the healthy ones infected a large number of inhabitants through their old woollen overcoats, which were thoroughly saturated with the miasma of the hospitals. The clothes that were sold privately were particularly dangerous, so that in the latter part of December strict orders were issued to keep watch for the old clothes and burn them. In the first part of January, when the rather lax siege began, typhus fever spread irresistibly throughout the city; in that month the pestilence reached its climax with 175 deaths. On January 22 the prefects ordered general fumigations in all public buildings, and recommended that the citizens should also fumigate their homes. The result was very successful; in February 112 people died, in March 75, and in April 27, and then typhus fever disappeared. No foreign troops marched through the stronghold, and although all the French prisoners of war passed through the city, no more citizens were infected by them, for the reason that they were quartered in the fortifications.
The devastation caused by the pestilence in Metz was no less than frightful. Maréchal and Didion[[173]] give us a picture of this severe epidemic. On November 19, 1813, some 5,000 sick soldiers were assigned to that city; it was necessary to see that they were sheltered, and at the same time measures were adopted to prevent the disease from spreading. According to the report of the astute Mayor of Metz, Baron Marchant, the 5,000 soldiers, all of them suffering from an infectious disease, arrived, and sixty of them died every day. All the physicians in Metz contracted the disease, and several of them died. It was impossible to procure sick-attendants, since those who had performed this service had all contracted the disease, conveyed it home, and infected their families. Sick soldiers who were quartered privately, and particularly convalescents, also helped to spread the disease throughout the city; more than 150 houses were infected. In the latter part of December the number of patients greatly increased. On January 1, 1814, after Blücher had crossed the Rhine, the Germans marched against Metz, and then an enormous crowd of people from the surrounding country fled to that city for protection. This caused typhus fever to spread far and wide throughout the city. Furthermore, sick and exhausted soldiers were constantly being sent to Metz, and it is estimated that some 30,000 of them arrived there. The worst month was February, and 7,752 soldiers, all told, died in six months:
| November | 463 |
| December | 1,602 |
| January | 1,360 |
| February | 2,365 |
| March | 1,622 |
| April | 340 |
1,294 civilians also died, the largest number (371) likewise in February. In the entire Department of Moselle, which at that time had some 400,000 inhabitants, no less than 10,329 people succumbed to this epidemic, and this number does not include the soldiers.
Regarding the wide dissemination of typhus fever in the Departments east and south of Paris, which formed the scene of the war in the first part of the year 1814 (the Departments of Haute-Marne, Côte-d’Or, Aube, Yonne, Marne, Seine-et-Marne), no further information is available. Troyes, Besançon, Dijon, Avallon, and Auxerre are mentioned as places that were attacked by the pestilence.
In Paris, cases of typhus fever occurred in February, when the war moved closer to that city. The sick and wounded soldiers were consequently obliged to go to the hospitals in Paris; but since these were neither large nor numerous enough to accommodate so many patients, it became necessary to open several provisional hospitals in appropriate buildings. At first all the typhus-fever patients were taken to the Hôpital de la Pitié, but it soon became necessary to change this policy, since the disease had spread throughout all the wards of that building. In the latter part of February the first cases of typhus fever appeared in the city, in consequence of the return of many soldiers to their own families. In March more and more people contracted the disease, which toward the end of the month was raging furiously, though more in the hospitals than in the city. In the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, which had been converted into a military hospital and began to be used on February 9, 1814, a small number of persons contracted typhus fever in the latter part of March, and in the months of April and May the disease spread; after that, however, it began to abate. A great many nurses and attendants were taken sick.[[174]] In April a large number of people in the city were lying sick with typhus fever. In one boarding-school, from which several persons visited the hospitals and brought typhus fever home with them, thirty people contracted the disease and four succumbed to it. In May cases of typhus fever became more rare, and in August no more people contracted the disease. The mortality in Paris in the year 1814 was very high; whereas in the years 1812 and 1813 the number of deaths had been 20,133 and 18,676 respectively, in the year 1814 no less than 27,778 people died, which number includes 2,559 soldiers that died in the hospitals. In the year 1815 the number of deaths decreased again to 19,992. How large the number of deaths due to typhus fever was, it is impossible to state with certainty, since in the case of only a small number of the persons who actually died of typhus fever was that disease recorded as the cause of death. The rubric ‘fièvres putrides et adynamiques’ increased in the year 1813 from 1,337 deaths to 2,860 deaths, and the rubric ‘fièvres malignes ou ataxiques’ from 804 to 1,376.[[175]]
Owing to the overcrowded condition of the hospitals in Paris, soldiers were conveyed upon a number of boats on the Seine to Rouen. Since sick and wounded men were thus transported together, typhus fever was conveyed to Rouen, where it carried away large numbers of persons employed in the hospitals. In the same way, sick and wounded were transported to points on the Loire, causing typhus fever to spread to Tours, where 860 soldiers succumbed to it.[[176]]