In Mecklenburg typhus fever began to spread after the erection of a military lazaret in Malchow (October, 1813), and after the erection of a second lazaret by the Swedes in Wittenburg (near Schwerin).
In Kiel typhus fever did not appear until the beginning of the year 1814; Weber[158] attributed the outbreak there to the Swedish military lazaret, in which physicians and nurses frequently contracted the disease. At first the poorer people were attacked (probably because the sick-attendants were of that class), and later the well-to-do. The pestilence, mild at first, soon became very severe. The disease also broke out in other places in Holstein; Pinneberg was severely attacked, and the disease was also observed in Schleswig. It is remarkable that, according to Weber, no exanthema was observed in Kiel; it must, however, have been present in a scarcely noticeable form, since a rash appeared on the entire skin of convalescents. The disease always began with a chill, and was characterized now by obstinate constipation, now by diarrhoea; no patient who survived the thirteenth day died. And even if an exanthema was not observed, there can be no doubt that it was typhus fever which raged in Kiel. Weber himself calls the disease contagious typhus.
4. THE APPEARANCE OF TYPHUS FEVER IN SOUTH GERMANY
Typhus fever was conveyed to various places throughout South Germany by the few soldiers that returned from Russia. Nowhere did it become very widespread, since the authorities soon realized its dangers and prevented it from spreading by means of appropriate measures of precaution. A change took place, however, after the battle of Leipzig, when large numbers of fugitive and captive French soldiers came into the country, and when troops, particularly Russians, kept constantly marching back and forth across the country and spreading the infection. Another important cause of the appearance of the disease there was the fact that lazarets were erected in South Germany during the campaign in France, for the purpose of sheltering the sick and wounded soldiers that were transported back from France.
Regarding the dissemination of typhus fever in Bavaria we are very well informed in a dissertation by F. Seitz.[159] As among other divisions of troops, so also among the Bavarian division, typhus fever raged extensively. On the march from the Vistula to the Oder thirty or forty men contracted the disease every day, and some of them also suffered from diarrhoea, dysentery, and other diseases; so that when Crossen-on-the-Oder was reached only 113 officers and 2,253 men were left. During the sojourn in Crossen and during the march through Saxony in March, the number of the patients increased, and by the middle of March there were only 1,000 able-bodied men left. Thus they arrived at the Bavarian border. ‘The rumour of the wide prevalence of nerve-fever in North Germany,’ says Seitz, ‘and the apprehension that the disease might be conveyed into Bavaria by soldiers returning from the field of battle, had preceded the arrival of the first warriors. Nevertheless people did not wish to forgo the pleasure of sheltering in their homes the soldiers, who had been exposed to so many hardships and privations, and of helping them to forget their past troubles; and in performing this philanthropic duty they lost sight of the necessary caution which prudence demanded.’