(a) Switzerland
Switzerland was exposed to great danger in consequence of the passage of General Bourbaki’s army, which consisted partly of very young soldiers who had suffered great hardships, including cold and hunger, and which contained large numbers of men who were suffering from small-pox. The little country was called upon to take in some 85,000 men; when the latter were examined on the frontier a large number of them were found to be infected with small-pox and were held at Verrière in France. But this did not prevent the disease from being conveyed across the border. Of the French prisoners confined there, 137, all told, succumbed to small-pox.
Unfortunately no mortality statistics giving the cause of death were compiled in Switzerland until the year 1876, so that we have no figures indicating the prevalence of small-pox. The western cantons were most exposed to the infection. In Berne, which at that time had a population of 506,511, no less than 2,637 persons, excluding the French prisoners interned there, contracted the disease between October 1870 and September 1872; in the year 1871 there were 9·6 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants.[[293]] In the city of Basel, which was attacked as early as November 1870, the epidemic reached its climax in February; the number of deaths there was as follows:[[294]]
| Total no. | Per 10,000 inhabitants. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1870 | 7 | 1·6 |
| 1871 | 64 | 14·0 |
| 1872 | 13 | 2·7 |
The Canton of Basel (Land) was attacked somewhat less severely; in the year 1871 only 59 persons (10·9 per 10,000 inhabitants) succumbed there to small-pox. In the Canton of Solothurn, which was infected from Olten, a railway junction, 13·9 persons per 10,000 inhabitants died in the year 1871. In the Canton of Waadt small-pox broke out, according to Vogt, in the district of Vivis in November 1870, and 200 persons contracted the disease in the course of that month. In the two small-pox hospitals at Lausanne, 351 patients were treated between November 20, 1870, and the end of 1871, and 62 of them died.
The small-pox epidemic spread very rapidly from the West throughout all the rest of Switzerland, partly in consequence of the distribution of the French prisoners among the other cantons, and partly in consequence of inland intercourse. Of the French prisoners interned in the Canton of Zurich 180, according to A. Brunner,[[295]] contracted the disease and 31 died of it. The patients were sheltered in the small-pox camp at Winterthur, whence the infection spread to many places. In February 1871 there was a rapid increase in the number of cases; the epidemic reached its climax in March and April, and then steadily abated until June. The statistics for the Canton of Zurich, which had a population of 285,915, were as follows:
| Patients. | Deaths. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1870 | 85 | 6 |
| 1871 | 1,068 | 137 |
| 1872 | 200 | 18 |
| 1873 | 22 | |
In the Canton of Thurgau, according to Vogt, there were 9·2 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants in the year 1871, in the Canton of Schaffhausen 4·0, and in the Canton of St. Gall 3·3. During the small-pox epidemic that raged in the Canton of Schwyz in the year 1871 the communities of Gersau and Küssnacht were severely attacked; throughout the entire canton 56 persons (11·7 per 10,000 inhabitants) succumbed to the disease. The Cantons of Glarus, Unterwalden, Zug, and Graubünden were also rather severely attacked. In the Canton of Tessin, whither the disease, which first appeared in Locarno, had been conveyed by travellers from Paris, and where 62 cases of it and 6 deaths had been reported up to June, a new epidemic broke out in Personico, resulting in 15 deaths; in the year 1871 there were 11 deaths reported throughout the entire canton. In the Canton of Willis small-pox broke out only sporadically.
(b) Belgium
In numerous places throughout Belgium small-pox had appeared in the first part of the year 1870 in the form of widespread epidemics, a fact which we can readily explain when we consider the country’s proximity to France, which was everywhere infected with the disease. Thus, according to Larondelle, a severe epidemic of small-pox broke out in February 1870, in the city of Verviers, which at that time had some 33,000 inhabitants, and lasted until January 1871; in the year 1870 no less than 428 deaths were reported there, and 185 of them occurred in the month of December alone. When the war began French fugitives kept bringing the disease into the country, especially after the battle of Sedan, when more than 10,000 French soldiers were interned on Belgian soil, some in Beverloo and others in the citadel of Antwerp. From these places the epidemic spread throughout all Belgium. In Brussels, for example, no cases of small-pox were reported in July 1870, in August there were two cases, in September two, in October twenty-two, in November sixty-nine, and in December 101. In all Belgium the number of deaths caused by small-pox was:[[296]]