The disease was conveyed by soldiers from Stettin to Leipzig, where it spread to the civil population; from Leipzig it spread throughout Saxony and Thuringia. When the Prussian army advanced into Bohemia the cases of the disease began to increase, and after the battle of Königgrätz (July 3, 1866) the dissemination of the disease was helped along by the crowding together of large numbers of sick and wounded soldiers. The rapid advance of the Prussian army increased the disease’s rate of dissemination; on all the army’s lines of march large numbers of sick soldiers were left behind, for example, in Göritz, Gitschin, Königinhof, Pardubitz, Czaslau, and Leitomischl. In Prague cases of cholera were reported a few days after the city was occupied. The pestilence was conveyed by Prussian soldiers to Moravia, where it appeared in Prerau, Brünn, Iglau, Klosterbrück, Znaym, and Nikolsburg. The further advance of the Prussians conveyed it to Lower Austria; in Vienna it did not break out until August.
Some think that the pestilence was conveyed into Austria from Bukowina, where it had broken out in May 1866. When the war broke out, it is maintained, the disease was conveyed by troops to the western crown-lands of Austria.[[230]] ‘The truth’, says Niedner, ‘probably lies half way between; the epidemic in Bohemia was disseminated chiefly by the Prussian troops, but in the other Austrian countries by Austrian troops.’ Daimer,[[231]] one of the best authorities on the history of pestilences in Austria, says: ‘In the year 1866 an epidemic of cholera came to an end in Bukowina, where it was looked upon as the continuation of one that had been prevailing in Turkey and Roumania; it spread throughout the countries in which fighting was going on at that time, and was borne by troops to remote regions.’ According to Presl,[[232]] the number of deaths due to cholera in the several crown-lands in the year 1866 was:
| No. inhabitants (Dec. 31, 1869). | Deaths due to cholera. | |
|---|---|---|
| Lower Austria | 1,983,149 | 15,114 |
| Upper Austria | 733,241 | 153 |
| Salzburg | 152,141 | 1 |
| Styria | 1,139,205 | 260 |
| Carinthia | 336,768 | 40 |
| Carniola | 465,463 | 930 |
| Küstenland | 585,467 | 1,067 |
| Tirol and Vorarlberg | 880,985 | 25 |
| Bohemia | 5,151,332 | 42,730 |
| Moravia | 2,016,186 | 55,527 |
| Silesia | 518,443 | 2,919 |
| Galicia | 5,491,675 | 34,857 |
| Bukowina | 522,481 | 11,656 |
| Dalmatia | 445,201 | 13 |
| All Austria | 20,421,737 | 165,292 |
In Prussia, too, cholera spread, in consequence of the war, more widely than ever before; the total number of deaths caused by it in the year 1866 was no less than 114,776, and in the following year it was 6,086.[[233]] Of the Prussian troops 4,529 (16·2 per cent) succumbed to cholera, and the total loss due to disease was 5,219; only 4,008 men were killed on the field or died from wounds.
In the Grand Duchy of Hesse a few rather small epidemics occurred, and a larger one in Mayence.
In the case of Baden the connexion between the appearance of cholera and the war has been carefully investigated.[[234]] The disease broke out in the region of the Main and Tauber and in the Odenwald, and in regions which had never before been attacked by cholera. On July 24, 1866, Wertheim received a Prussian garrison, which on the 26th was joined by parts of the Hamburg contingent. As mentioned above, cholera had already broken out in Hamburg in June, and a few days after the arrival of the Hanseatic troops some of them contracted the disease and were taken, despite the objections of the local authorities, to the town hospital. On August 6, cases of the disease appeared in the city, and they constituted the beginning of a small epidemic which lasted six weeks. On September 22 the epidemic was over, after the population of 3,383 had lost 28 persons by death; 64 persons contracted the disease. In near-by Freudenberg, of 42 people that contracted the disease, 23 died. In Schönfeld two soldiers of the Hamburg contingent contracted the disease on July 29; the first case among the civil inhabitants, who numbered 524, was on August 2, and in a few days a small epidemic began; 166 people contracted the disease and 55 succumbed to it. At the same time the Hanseatic troops conveyed the disease to Gerlachsheim, where 61 persons contracted it and 32 died of it, and also to Ilmspan, where 97 contracted it and 34 succumbed to it. On August 1 the Hamburg soldiers came to Grünsfeld and brought four cholera patients with them, and the result was that 177 of the inhabitants, who numbered 1,458 all told, contracted the disease and 23 of them died. The disease was conveyed to Dittigheim by cholera convalescents of the Hamburg contingent, and 225 persons contracted it there and 66 succumbed to it. In Gerlachsheim it appeared after a Saxon ammunition-column, which was supposed to be absolutely free from the disease, had passed through the city. In the case of Walldurn, which had a very severe epidemic (the city had 3,339 inhabitants, and of these 827 contracted the disease and 113 succumbed to it), it was impossible to prove that the disease broke out in consequence of the arrival of the soldiers. Külsheim, which was infected from Walldurn, had only a small number of cases. Throughout Baden 1,774 persons contracted cholera and 404 succumbed to it. From these statements it is very evident that the danger of an extensive epidemic of cholera in the regions south of the Main would have been very great, if the war had been carried on there on a large scale, and had thus prevented the authorities from taking measures to prevent the dissemination of the disease.
The small epidemic in Uzmemmingen, a village of 700 inhabitants in the north-east part of Württemberg, was brought about by a chamber-maid, who on August 25 brought the disease from a Bohemian place through which a Prussian detachment had passed; 60 persons, all told, contracted the disease in Uzmemmingen, and 19 succumbed to it.[[235]]
In the Bavarian Governmental District of Lower Franconia cholera broke out, as in Baden, in consequence of the operations of Prussian troops.[[236]] In the last week of July there were skirmishes between the Prussians and Bavarians near Hettstadt and Waldbrunn; after the withdrawal of the Prussians, many of whom were seized with diarrhoea, cholera broke out in both of those villages. The outbreak in Miltenberg was also connected with the arrival there of Prussian soldiers. Presently other places in Lower Franconia were attacked; for example, Rothenfels, Birkenfeld, Karbach, Stadtprozelten, Tiefenthal, Waldbüttelbrunn, &c. A Bavarian authority gives credit for the non-appearance of the disease in Remlingen and among the civil inhabitants of Uettingen, where Prussian soldiers suffering from cholera lay, to the care and vigilance of the Prussian military physicians. Cholera also appeared in the Governmental District of Swabia, breaking out in the cities along the Danube, in Höchstädt, Dillingen, Gundelfingen, and Neuburg. But it was impossible to prove that the disease was conveyed thither from the scene of the war.[[237]]