United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Those who did not die of their wounds, of filth, and of misery, were carried away by petechial typhus which had developed into a violent epidemic in Wilna, and several thousand of the citizens, among them many Jews, succumbed to the ravages of this disease.
Some of the physicians speak only of the sick and the diseases, as Bourgeois, who says that on the march to Russia during the sultry weather the many cadavers of horses putrefied rapidly, filling the air with miasms, and that this caused much disease; further, in describing the retreat he only says that the army was daily reduced in consequence of the constant fighting, the privations and diseases, without enumerating which diseases were prevailing; only in a note attached to his booklet he mentions that the most frequent of the ravaging diseases of that time and during the Russian campaign in general was typhus, and there can be no doubt it was petechial or exanthematic typhus, for which the English literature has the vague name typhus fever.
Probably decomposing blood gave rise to the offensive odor of the person. The function of the lungs was considerably impaired. The petechial fever in Italy in 1505 was a form of the sweating sickness. There were visitations in 1506 and in 1515 in England.
It is said that in 1524 a petechial fever carried off 50,000 people in Milan, and possibly this was the same disease. In 1529 the disease had spread all over Europe, attended with great mortality. Germany, France, and Italy were visited equally. The famine in Germany, at this time, is described by authorities in a tone of deep sympathy.
Salicylic acid in medicinal doses frequently causes untoward symptoms, such as dizziness, transient delirium, diminution of vision, headache, and profuse perspiration; petechial eruptions and intense gastric symptoms have also been noticed.
Word Of The Day