To quote Winston Churchill, “Plague and pestilence will follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler’s tanks.”

From time immemorial, epidemics have been part and parcel of the hideous insanity of war. History will tell us that often it has been pestilence rather than the generals which has decided the issue of the campaigns.

The diseases which always accompanied earlier wars were not necessarily all virus diseases, yet typhus was invariably present and sometimes smallpox together with such non-virus diseases as plague, cholera, enteric fever, pneumonia and dysentery. The viruses causing these various diseases can be studied well under the microscope using high power microscopy.

In 88 B.C.in Rome 17,000 men in the army of Octavius were killed by an epidemic. In the “Elephant War” the Abyssinian army of 60,000 men was completely disorganized by a disease which Zinsser suggests might have been a severe form of smallpox. In the Crusades, also, disease was far more potent than the Saracens. In 1098, when a Christian army was besieging Antioch, so many were killed by disease that they could not be buried, while the cavalry were rendered useless by the death of 5,000 of their 7,000 horses. After the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 only 60,000 men of the original 300,000 were left. The Thirty Years’ War was dominated in all its phases by epidemics, particularly typhus. There was one occasion in 1632 when the opposing armies were both defeated by typhus single-handedly. And so it goes on through the centuries until we come to Napoleon’s frequent cases of young women with long, permanently waved hair, which is apparently never disturbed for weeks and which forms an ideal breeding ground for the para¬sites. Mr. Mellanby noted that “The hairdressing profession will do much to reduce the incidence of the head-louse if it can persuade women to avoid elaborate “set” which, because of the difficulty in replacing, are often left uncombed and unwashed for very long periods. The shorter the hair the less liable it will be to louse infestation. In the Middle Ages, women erected an elaborate coiffure on their heads of a more or less permanent nature in which generations of head lice lived in comfortable security.

As long as the louse continues to exist amongst a population there will always be the possibility of typhus. In a clean community with adequate facilities for washing of the person and wash¬ing of underclothes, the body louse cannot exist. There are now efficient ointments for the elimination of the head-louse.

In World War I, a new virus disease made its appearance among the troops serving on the western front. This disease, which may be likened to a kind of mild cousin of typhus fever, was known as “trench fever”. Although this “trench fever“ is not a very serious affliction, it has caused considerable wastage among the troops. For, some time it was not known how the infection was spread, but it was finally proved that once again the louse was responsible for the transmission of the disease. The appearance of the louse which has been the culprit of the “trench fever” before can now be viewed under the microscope using high power microscopy.

The mechanism of infection by the louse was never discovered. After the First World War the disease completely disappeared. It has not been possible to apply modern methods to its study. The way things are going at present, new opportunities for study of the study of the different viruses are possible using high power microscopy. New technologies such as the use of the microscope are very much helpful.

We can speculate on the possible modes of transfer of this virus from louse to man. It may be that the insect actually infects man by inoculating the virus directly into his blood during the process of feeding, or alternatively by a combined process of stabbing with the mouth-parts and regurgitating virus from the alimentary canal. The view most generally favored, however, seems to be that infection takes place by a more indirect method in which the victim himself plays a part. It is no uncommon thing for soldiers to crush lice on the underclothing. If this is done to virus-carrying lice, the clothing becomes contaminated with the body juices and the contents of the alimentary canal. From clothing thus contaminated it is possible that the virus may be introduced mechanically into abrasions on the skin made by scratching. However, whether the louse plays a direct or indirect part in the transmission of trench fever, the part it plays is essential and the virus cannot be spread in its absence. The elimination of the louse is the first step in combating this disease. The appearance of the louse could be best seen under the microscope. To combat the disease caused by the louse, a great deal was done in the last war by the introduction, behind the lines, of apparatus for sterilizing the soldiers’ underclothes by steam.