Harald Westergaard, Professor of Political Science and Statistics in the University of Copenhagen.
Friedrich, Freiherr von Wieser, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Vienna.
The function of members of this Committee is to select collaborators competent to conduct investigations and present reports in the form of books or monographs; to consult with these writers as to plans of study; to read the completed manuscripts, and to inform the officers of the Endowment whether they merit publication in its series. This editorial function does not commit the members of the Committee to any opinions expressed by the writers. Like other editors, they are asked to vouch for the usefulness of the works, their scientific and literary merit, and the advisability of issuing them. In like manner, the publication of the monographs does not commit the Endowment as a body or any of its officers to the opinions which may be expressed in them. The standing and attainments of the writers selected afford a guarantee of thoroughness of research and accuracy in the statement of facts, and the character of many of the works will be such that facts, statistical, historical, and descriptive, will constitute nearly the whole of their content. In so far as the opinions of the writers are revealed, they are neither approved nor condemned by the fact that the Endowment causes them to be published. For example, the publication of a work describing the attitude of various socialistic bodies on the subject of peace and war implies nothing as to the views of the officers of the Endowment on the subject of socialism; neither will the issuing of a work, describing the attitude of business classes toward peace and war, imply any agreement or disagreement on the part of the officers of the Endowment with the views of men of these classes as to a protective policy, the control of monopoly, or the regulation of banking and currency. It is necessary to know how such men generally think and feel on the great issue of war, and it is one of the purposes of the Endowment to promote studies which will accurately reveal their attitude. Neither it nor its Committee of Research vouches for more than that the works issued by them contain such facts; that their statements concerning them may generally be trusted, and that the works are, in a scientific way, of a quality that entitles them to a reading.
This monograph on epidemics resulting from wars is designed to bring into light an aspect of international conflict that has never been adequately appreciated. An examination of the facts here presented will indicate that until comparatively recent times the most serious human cost of war has been not losses in the field, nor even the losses from disease in the armies, but the losses from epidemics disseminated among the civil populations. It was the war epidemics and their sequelae, rather than direct military losses, that accounted for the deep prostration of Germany after the Thirty Years’ War. Such epidemics were also the gravest consequence of the Napoleonic Wars.
It may appear that a study of war epidemics can have only historical interest, in view of the progress of modern medical science. Plague, cholera, and typhus can be brought under control by modern methods of sanitation. One can point to the fact that in the present great war, the only serious epidemic that has been reported is the typhus fever epidemic in Serbia. When the medical history of the war comes to be written, however, it will be found that the aggregate losses from sporadic outbreaks of war epidemics have been very considerable. A war sufficiently protracted to lead to universal impoverishment and a breakdown of medical organization would be attended, as in earlier times, by the whole series of devastating war epidemics. And even in the case of less exhausting wars, the chances of widespread epidemics is far from negligible. There is much food for reflection in the author’s account of the small-pox epidemic following the Franco-German War. In 1870 the means of coping with small-pox were as nearly perfect as they are in the greater part of the world to-day. This fact did not save Europe from a widespread epidemic, entailing human losses exceeding in gravity the losses in the field. To-day, as in the past, the probabilities of increased morbidity in the civil population, not only among the belligerents, but among neutrals as well, must be entered as a highly important debit item against war.
John Bates Clark,
Director.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
|---|---|---|
| INTRODUCTION | [1] | |
| CHAPTER I | ||
| War Pestilences | [4] | |
| CHAPTER II | ||
| The Time before the Thirty Years’ War | [11] | |
| CHAPTER III | ||
| The Thirty Years’ War | [25] | |
| CHAPTER IV | ||
| The Period between the Peace of Westphalia and the French Revolution | [79] | |
| CHAPTER V | ||
| The Period between the French Revolution and Napoleon’s Russian Campaign | [92] | |
| CHAPTER VI | ||
| The Epidemics of Typhus Fever in Central Europe following upon the Russian Campaign and during the Wars of Liberation (1812–14) | [106] | |
| CHAPTER VII | ||
| From the Age of Napoleon to the Franco-German War | [165] | |
| 1. The Russo-Turkish War of 1828–9 | [165] | |
| 2. The Crimean War (1854–6) | [170] | |
| 3. The North American Civil War (1861–5) | [175] | |
| 4. The Italian War of 1859 | [183] | |
| 5. The Danish War of 1864 | [183] | |
| 6. The German War of 1866 | [184] | |
| CHAPTER VIII | ||
| The Franco-German War of 1870–1, and the Epidemic of Small-pox caused by it | [189] | |
| CHAPTER IX | ||
| From the Franco-German War to the Present Time | [286] | |
| 1. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 | [286] | |
| 2. The Boer War of 1899–1901 | [290] | |
| 3. The War in South-west Africa (1904–7) | [296] | |
| 4. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 | [296] | |
| 5. The Occupation of Tripoli by the Italians (1911) | [299] | |
| 6. The War between Turkey and the Balkan States (1912–13) | [300] | |
| CHAPTER X | ||
| Epidemics in Besieged Strongholds | [302] | |
| 1. The Siege of Mantua (1796–7) | [304] | |
| 2. The Siege of Danzig (1813) | [306] | |
| 3. The Siege of Torgau (1813) | [311] | |
| 4. The Siege of Mayence (1813–14) | [316] | |
| 5. The Siege of Paris (1870–1) | [320] | |
| 6. The Siege of Port Arthur (1904) | [324] | |
| CONCLUSION | [328] | |
| INDEX | [335] | |