Among these 1,077 victims of the disease were 21 soldiers and 27 outsiders from the surrounding villages. The disease was very virulent. Of the 1,727 patients treated in the hospital 253 died (14·7 per cent). The population of Leipzig in the year 1871 was 106,922, so that the 1,052 deaths of the year 1871 correspond to a mortality of 98·4 per 10,000 inhabitants. Of 3,726 prisoners, 98 (76·3 per 10,000) contracted the disease and 9 died.
In the district of Leipzig no case of small-pox was officially reported between the months of May and October. When the disease broke out in the city of Leipzig it was of course inevitable, in view of the constant intercourse between the city and the surrounding country, that it should spread rapidly among the working people who were employed in the city and lived in the country, first to the immediate vicinity, and then, following the chief lines of traffic, to the more remote localities.[[277]] Of 113 places 106 were attacked; only two peasant-villages and five isolated farm-estates were spared. The villages inhabited by working people were much more severely attacked than those inhabited by farmers and peasants. The progress of the epidemic is indicated by the following figures, which Siegel says are incomplete, since not all the cases were reported, and which correspond at best to only one-half of the actual number of cases and deaths:
| Cases. | Deaths. | |
|---|---|---|
| October (1870) | 2 | |
| November | 9 | 3 |
| December | 22 | 5 |
| January (1871) | 107 | 16 |
| February | 216 | 42 |
| March | 398 | 103 |
| April | 816 | 255 |
| May | 944 | 367 |
| June | 732 | 311 |
| July | 288 | 161 |
| August | 94 | 68 |
| September | 45 | 35 |
| October | 38 | 16 |
| November | 41 | 25 |
| December | 44 | 18 |
| January (1872) | 26 | 12 |
| February | 28 | 20 |
| March | 18 | 11 |
| April | 6 | 10 |
| May | 5 | 6 |
| June | 2 | 1 |
| July |
According to this table the number of deaths in the district of Leipzig, the population of which was 97,100, was eight in the year 1870, 1,417 (145·9 per 10,000 inhabitants) in the year 1871, and 60 in the year 1872. Accurate figures regarding the ratio of deaths to total cases cannot be computed; at all events small-pox raged very severely, owing partly to insufficient vaccination, and partly to the wretched conditions in which the working people lived.
In Dresden, mild epidemics of small-pox had raged in the year 1864 and again in the years 1867–8; between the months of January and August 1870 not a single small-pox patient was taken to the city hospital; the first case was committed to the hospital on September 27 of that year, and after that two more persons contracted the disease in a barrack. The disease spread from there, at first along the streets in the vicinity of the barrack, and then throughout the Antonstadt, Neustadt, and finally the Altstadt. The epidemic reached its climax among the civil inhabitants in April 1871, in the garrison in January. The following table indicates the number of patients committed to the city hospital in the months mentioned:[[278]]
| September (1870) | 2 |
| October | 12 |
| November | 22 |
| December | 31 |
| January (1871) | 60 |
| February | 82 |
| March | 95 |
| April | 186 |
| May | 173 |
| June | 148 |
| July | 78 |
| August | 38 |
| September | 18 |
| October | 32 |
| November | 40 |
| December | 62 |
| January (1872) | 59 |
| February | 57 |
| March | 30 |
| April | 40 |
| May | 13 |
| June | 13 |
All told, there were fifteen deaths due to the disease in Dresden in the year 1870, 570 deaths (32·7 per 10,000 inhabitants) in the year 1871, and 151 deaths (8·4 per 10,000) in the year 1872. Among the prisoners there were 150 cases of the disease, and of these nine were fatal; in the garrison there were 413 cases and twenty-one deaths.
The epidemic of small-pox in Chemnitz, at least the beginning of it, was in no way connected with the war. An exhaustive report made out by Flinzer,[[279]] who carefully investigated the conditions relative to vaccination in the year 1871, furnishes us the following figures; of 64,255 inhabitants 53,891 were vaccinated, 5,712 were unvaccinated, 4,652 had survived a previous attack of small-pox, and only 1,928 persons had been vaccinated more than once. The epidemic of small-pox began in January 1870, and reached its climax in December of that year. From March 1871 to September 1872, only a few cases of the disease were observed, but after September the number of cases suddenly began to grow larger, resulting in a second severe epidemic, which continued to increase in severity until March 1873. The mortality statistics found in Flinzer’s report are reproduced below; they go only as far as April 1873, but after that the epidemic abated considerably:
| 1870. | 1871. | 1872. | 1873. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 1 | 25 | 3 | 43 |
| February | 3 | 15 | 1 | 68 |
| March | 5 | 4 | 5 | 74 |
| April | 8 | 3 | 4 | 37 |
| May | 8 | 3 | 6 | |
| June | 8 | 1 | 10 | |
| July | 19 | 14 | ||
| August | 27 | 6 | ||
| September | 20 | 1 | 6 | |
| October | 28 | 1 | 12 | |
| November | 28 | 1 | 27 | |
| December | 38 | 2 | 32 | |
| Total | 193 | 56 | 126 | 222 |
A particularly good idea of the protection against small-pox afforded by vaccination is given in the Chemnitz statistics for the years 1870–1. Of 53,891 vaccinated persons 953 (1·8 per cent) contracted the disease in those two years and seven succumbed to it, all of whom were more than ten years of age; of 5,712 unvaccinated persons, almost one-half contracted the disease (2,643 or 46·3 per cent, to be precise), and of these 243 (9·16 of those taken sick) died. Of those who died, 102 were less than one year old, 51 were less than two years old, 47 were in their fourth or fifth year, and 20 were from five to ten years of age.