As early as the winter of 1854–5 a small number of cases of typhus fever occurred among the French and English soldiers; but not until the winter of 1855–6, between the months of December and March, did the disease become very widespread in the French army in consequence of unfavourable living conditions; the English army, on the other hand, scarcely suffered at all during that winter. Scrive and Chenu publish the following statistics relating to the French army in the field-lazarets of the Crimea:
| Months. | Size of army. | Typhus fever patients. | Taken to Constantinople. | No. deaths. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December (1855) | 145,120 | 734 | 204 | 323 |
| January (1856) | 144,512 | 1,523 | 320 | 464 |
| February | 132,800 | 3,402 | 925 | 1,435 |
| March | 121,000 | 3,457 | 1,140 | 1,830 |
| April | 105,000 | 237 | 101 | |
| May | 67,000 | 38 | 17 |
According to Scrive, 11,124 typhus-fever patients, all told, were taken into the field-lazarets of the Crimea between September 1854 and July 1856; of these, 3,840 were removed to Constantinople, and 6,018 died in the field-lazarets.[[201]] But Scrive says that this number of typhus-fever patients is too small; it must have been increased by the number of persons who contracted the disease in the field-lazarets and hospitals, 4,502 of whom succumbed to it, and the number who contracted and succumbed to it in Constantinople and France, making 7,000 all told. According to Scrive, therefore, the total number of deaths due to typhus fever in the French army was no less than 17,515, from which he assumes that at least 35,000 men contracted the disease.[[202]]
In the English army typhus fever appeared only sporadically in the winter of 1855–6; according to Chenu, 167 men contracted the disease and 62 succumbed to it.[[203]]
Among the Russian troops typhus fever raged furiously,[[204]] and according to A. Hirsch it was also very widespread in southern Russia.[[205]]
In Constantinople, typhus fever, although it infected numerous persons in the military hospitals, apparently did not spread to the civil population. Baudens, who after the capture of Sebastopol came to the Orient, says expressly that the inhabitants of Constantinople were spared by the epidemic during its entire course.[[206]]
According to Murchison, typhus fever was borne by English troops to English soil, where in the years 1856–7 it caused epidemics in various parts of the country. The following table indicates the number of typhus-fever patients taken into the Fever Hospital in London:
| 1854 | 337 |
| 1855 | 342 |
| 1856 | 1,062 |
| 1857 | 274 |
| 1858 | 15 |
The increased number in London was not due to the fact that the disease was brought over from Ireland, since there were only fifty-three Irishmen among the patients, and only two of them had been in the city less than three months. On the other hand, the warlike events caused a famine, resulting in much misery among the poor, and this favoured the further dissemination of the disease.[[207]]
When the French troops were transported back to France, energetic and extensive measures of precaution were adopted; only those troops were allowed to embark who had for several weeks been entirely recovered from typhus fever; several stations for the discharge of men who contracted the disease on the way were located along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and sixty-two patients, all told, were left behind at them; suspected divisions of troops, before disembarking at Marseilles, were quarantined for a time on several islands along the coast, on St. Marguerite (Îles de Lérins), on the Îles d’Hyères, and on others, and before entering the city they were examined again, bathed, and reclothed. The result was successful. Laveran says:[[208]] ‘The further one went away from the seat of the infection, and the more the soldiers scattered, the more the miasm seemed to lose strength; in France the typhus-fever patients gave rise to only a few cases inside the hospitals where they were being cared for; the disease was never communicated to the civil population.’