Typhus and tyranny

Abstract

Overcrowded conditions, the large-scale movements of troops and displaced persons, and the breakdown of rudimentary hygiene are ideal for the survival and transmission of body lice (Pediculus humanus humanus) and their sinister bacterial loads: Rickettsia prowazekii, the cause of the deadly disease typhus. In 1918, more than 650,000 cases of typhus were recorded in newly independent Poland alone.