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Typhus is an acute febrile disease caused by a series of bacteria called Rickettsia that is transmitted by insects such as lice, fleas, and ticks. This disease has appeared several times in Iran and caused many casualties. There were some therapeutic measures taken by European physicians in Tehran and medical graduates of the Dar al-Fonun school or expatriates who had studied medical courses in Western countries, even though the taken steps were not enough. Due to the lack of sanitation and cleaning products after the outbreak of World War I in March 1917 and its synchronization with the swift outbreak of Typhus in 1918, heavy casualties followed. In this study, we first examine the prevalence of Typhus in the Qajar dynasty in Iran, and will then focus on the pathological importance of this disease history in Iran. After that, we will study the role of Typhus prevalence and World War I in the Persian famine, malnutrition, and food poverty. Moreover, we investigated the role that this great war had in strengthening the spread of this disease and its role in the death of many Iranian people.

BackgroundMany soldiers in Napoleon’s Grand Army died of infectious diseases during its retreat from Russia. Because soldiers were commonly infested with body lice, it has been speculated that louse-borne infectious diseases, such as epidemic typhus (caused by Rickettsia prowazekii), were common MethodsWe investigated this possibility during recent excavations of a mass grave of Napoleon’s soldiers in Vilnius, Lithuania. Segments of 5 body lice, identified morphologically and by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequencing, were found in earth from the grave that also contained fragments of soldiers’ uniforms ResultsDNA of Bartonella quintana (the agent of trench fever) was identified by PCR and sequencing in 3 of the lice. Similarly, PCR and sequencing of dental pulp from the remains of 35 soldiers revealed DNA of B. quintana in 7 soldiers and DNA of R. prowazekii in 3 other soldiers ConclusionsOur results show that louse-borne infectious diseases affected nearly one-third of Napoleon’s soldiers buried in Vilnius and indicate that these diseases might have been a major factor in the French retreat from Russia

The luckiest soldiers were those based near coal mines in northern France whom had used the pit head baths, but disinfecting clothes effectively needed steam or hot air generated in big chambers, which could not be located near the front. Volunteer and autoinoculation studies by researchers during WW1 had demonstrated infectivity, and rickettsial-like inclusions had been seen in lice, louse feces and louse intestines collected from trench fever patients, so the agent was called Rickettsia quintana. First described in the American Civil War as ‘Da Costa's syndrome’, many thought that its cardiac symptoms were caused by anxiety. A fulminant course with ‘heliotrope’ cyanosis was characteristic, but attempts to prevent the spread of infection in military camps in the USAwere unsuccessful, with both quarantine and face masks not working and antiseptic gargles increasing the incidence of infection.

This article applies the model developed in Charles Rosenberg's seminal article \"What is an Epidemic?\" to typhus outbreaks in eighteenth-century London. That framework remains valuable for understanding contagious disease in early modernity by helping to highlight the structure of responses to epidemics. So-called \"Jail Fever\" outbreaks are especially instructive, in part because the most notorious of these epidemics were small affairs when compared to the larger pandemics that Rosenberg explored. Considering that they accounted for relatively few deaths, historians must answer why they caused such a stir. Whereas the raw body count often drives development of narratives about epidemics, eighteenth-century typhus epidemics often hinged more on who died and where than how many. Typhus ravaged poor and working class communities throughout the period. However, even significant spikes in mortality occurring in poor neighborhoods often failed to trigger proclamations of epidemics. Some deaths mattered more than others in this regard, suggesting that qualitative criteria may have played a greater role than quantitative criteria when it came to identifying which events registered as epidemics in the eighteenth century.

The paper argues that epidemic surveillance and state-building were closely interconnected in interwar Poland. Starting from the paper technology of weekly epidemiological reporting it discusses how the reporting scheme of Polish epidemics came into being in the context of a typhus epidemic in 1919–20. It then shows how the statistics regarding nation-wide epidemics was put into practice. It is only when we take into account these practices that we can understand the epidemiological order the statistics produced. The preprinted weekly report form registered Jews and Christians separately. Yet, the imagined national epidemiological space that emerged from it hardly took notice of this separation. Rather, the category that differentiated Polish epidemiological space in medical discourse was the capacity of contributing to the state-making practices of epidemic surveillance. This category divided Poland into two regions: a civilized and modern western region and a backward and peripheral eastern region.

Objective The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) has justly regarded its relief of the appalling conditions found in the liberated Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 as one of its more glorious achievements. This view has, in the last decade, come under attack from historians who have, inter alia, criticised the nature and speed of the medical measures employed by the British. This has focused particularly on the management of the typhus epidemic, erroneously claimed to be the major disease killer of the survivors, and which was the catalyst for the premature German surrender of the camp to the approaching Allies about 3 weeks before the end of the war. This review examines the veracity of this statement and the nature of the evidence on which it was based. Methods Review of all the relevant extant primary source written evidence both published and archived in major collections in London, Washington and Belsen, in addition to the relevant subsequent secondary evidence. Results Disprove the ill-considered and scientifically flawed attempts to discredit the RAMC and demonstrate that the RAMC can be shown to have made the correct prioritising decisions in relieving starvation as well as in implementing the appropriate public health anti-typhus measures and to have acquitted itself honourably. Discussion Underlines the pitfalls of basing sweeping conclusions on an imperfectly understood inadequate selection of the available evidence.