Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1877-05-23
AN ENEMY BESIDE THE TURKS,
The Terrible MaIariaI Disease of the
Lower Danube--'The Losses Suffered
by the Russians in Former Wars.

The Russians Will encounter one enc
my on the Lower Danube which the
most daring courage and the best organi-
cation cannot completely conquer-that
is disease. The fiat banks on the Rou-
manian side of the great river are over.
flown in the spring. AS the water re,
tires, there is broad stretch of quag-
mires and stagnant pools for miles in
extent--a prolific source of malarial fe.
vers. AS the heat increases in the burn
ing summer, these marshy hollows are
filled with a high, rank grass, SO
that for miles the eye can see
nothing but broad steppes of waving
grass, without a tree or house.
These meadows, however, seem equally
unhealthy with the more swampy plains
of spring, and, owing to the putrescent
vegetation and the scarcity of pure wa
ter, are a peculiar INDUS for cholera and
intestinal diseases. In the campaign of
1923, the Russians are believed to have
lost $4,000 men between the Pruth and
the Balkans, of whom much the larger
proportion persisted from plague"-
which appears to have been malignant
form of typhus, cholera, and typhoid OF
malarial fevers. In 1929, they lost co.
600 men, mainly from disease, and out
OF the whole army of 100000 men, the
returns showed 100000 cases in hospital,
or an average of two hospital treatments
for each soldier during the year. When
the Russian general took Adrianople, he
had mere skeleton of an army, and
after the peace of Adrianople was made,
he had but 10000 or $4,000 men to
lead back over the Danube, so reduced
had his forces been by sickness. In
fact, fever and cholera had already de-
feated him before the peace, and had
the Sultan but known the real condition
Of his army, the issue of the war would
have been utterly different. The gree.
Deficiencies of the Muscovite service are
the commissariat and medical staff, and
never were the results of these deficien-
cies so painfully shown as in the war OF
1889
In 1915, the Russians suffered, but
owing to their more limited operations
on the Danube, not to the same extent
as in the former campaign. 1t was in
these years that the allies of the Danube
and the Dobrudscha, the British and
French camps near Varna became
abodes Of pestilence. In the French
movement to the Dobrudscha in pursuit
of the Russians, who had abandoned the
siege of Silistria, the march became a
track of death. Cholera destroyed the
force before it reached the enemy;
and the French had not made
many marches before they found
that it was all the living could do to
take care Of the dying and dead The
pursuit soon turned into a retreat before
the CHASTITY enemies Of pestilence and
fever. The especial causes were said to
be the bad water, the wells poisoned by
carcasses thrown in by the Russians, the
burning heat of the sun and cold nights,
and the miasma from the lately sub
merged ground. In fact, if the genius
of the allied leaders had not transferred
the war to the comparatively healthy
peninsula of the Crimea, the allied expe-
dition to sustain the Ottoman Empire
would have ended in disaster and dis
grace.