The Influence Of Typhus On Public Health

As the country enters into its second year of such a massive military endeavor, it pains me to inform the Grand Caliph of Islam and our Great Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Mehmed V that our greatest enemy may be one we can not see. As head of the Istanbul Public Health Municipal Council it is my duty to inform our leader that the countries biggest threat is none other then epidemic louse-born typhus, better known as “war fever.” Just a few years prior when the country was engaged in the Balkan War, the figure that caused the most deaths was not a bullet or a bomb, but typhus. It nearly decimated the Third Army troops at the Battle of Sarikamish, reports say some 15,000 deaths occurred due to sickness the main contributor of which was Typhus.
First to note is the, in my opinion, failure of the 1877 Provincial Municipal Laws, which we set in place to restructure local governments within the Empire and put public health into focus. At first these laws worked well to maintain public health sanctions among civilians by maintaining public markets, removing refuse, supervising public places such as hotels and cafes, and overseeing slaughterhouse sanitation. However, these laws are truly “perfect on paper”. What the laws failed to establish were sanctions for the military and plans for the arrival of troops into the towns. When events such as these occurred, towns were decimated by the arrival of unsanitized soldiers who brought in diseases such as typhus and much more. Once typhus infested lice entered the cities streets it is nearly impossible to get rid of. During the Balkan War one of my colleagues General Otto Liman Von Sanders described the soldiers living conditions as hygienically disturbing. He specifically notes that the living areas are infested with vermin leading to sickness spawning across many of the troops. As I too experienced, the hospital conditions were in appalling states with no bathing facilities anywhere within the premises. He accounts how over crowded the hospitals were and with that came a deep stench of filthy human bodies. He says that one of the most disturbing of sights was that patients with physical injuries and those stricken by disease were not separated throughout the hospital. He accounts that due to a lack of physician training, patients were examined from a distance and that they were prescribed “mounds” of medication opposed to drugs that would actually enhance the health of the patient. His accounts only further prove the ignorance of warfare medical care within the country. I was later informed that Sanders attempted to convey his concerns to military command, but as Ottoman