Epidemics Resulting from Wars

Epidemics Resulting from Wars is a historical and scientific work by Friedrich Prinzing. Prinzing was a German doctor and pioneer in the field of medical statistics, here delving into the history of war-related epidemics on large scale. Excerpt: "The causes of the origin and spread of pestilences during a war are clear. Every aggregation of people, even in times of peace, at celebrations and annual fairs, in barracks, and so forth, is necessarily exposed to the danger of pestilence; but this danger is ten times as great in large assemblages of troops during a war. The soldiers are then subjected to all possible kinds of hardship and suffering—lack of food, or food which is inferior and badly cooked, sleeping out in the cold and rain, fatiguing marches, constant excitement, and homesickness—and all these things greatly lessen their power of resistance. When large bodies of troops are obliged to remain in one and the same place for a considerable length of time, the additional difficulty presents itself of keeping the locality unpolluted by the excrement of men and animals, and by refuse of all kinds. If an infectious disease reveals its presence in such an aggregation of people, energetic and stringent measures must be adopted, even in times of peace, to prevent it from spreading. In war times it is often impossible to take the necessary precautions, since the attention of the commanders is directed toward very definite objects, to which all other considerations are subordinate. Whether the germ of the disease is already in the place, or whether the soldiers bring it with them, in either case there is danger that the fighting armies will cause the disease to spread over the entire scene of the war, and thus seriously endanger thousands of human lives."