116 LICE AND THEIR MENACE TO MAN 



infestation of all the prisoners, and this they 

 would themselves most willingly have performed 

 had the necessary apparatus been provided. 



Typhus also wrought sad havoc in Serbia 

 among both soldiers and civilians. There the 

 disease is endemic, a case occurring here and 

 there, year after year. It needed, however, the 

 strained conditions of war to bring it to epidemic 

 proportions. Three attacks from the Austrians 

 the brave armies of our Allies withstood, until 

 in a zone behind the front stretched an area of a 

 congested population of wounded soldiers and 

 refugees with all the supporting organisation of 

 the battle. All the large buildings were con- 

 verted into hospitals and were filled with the 

 wounded so that the medical services were 

 already strained to the utmost. Then this 

 dread enemy appeared amongst them, spread- 

 ing throughout, and the Austrians, taking ad- 

 vantage of the advent of this most loathsome 

 ally, were able to sweep through the country, 

 overcoming for a time, but never breaking, the 

 spirit of this proud little nation. 



To Doctors H. G. Wells and R. G. Perkins of 

 the American Red Cross Commission in Roumania 

 we owe an excellent account of the rise and fall 

 of one of the worst epidemics of louse-borne 

 diseases which have ever raged, at any rate in 

 recent years. This followed on the invasion of 

 Roumania and the consequent retirement of the 

 army, and the flight of the civil population 



