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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most of the regions of Macedonia and generally of the Balkan Peninsula, before the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, suffered from serious infectious diseases such as cholera and typhus fever, which were of endemic and, at long intervals, epidemic form.
Typical examples are the cholera epidemic, which broke out in 1911 in Thessaloniki and left 701 dead in its wake, as well as the cholera epidemic that struck the Romanian Army in the summer of that year, and the continuing typhus fever cases that plagued the Serbian Army and the residents of Monastiri area.1 Numerous have also been the typhus fever cases observed among the Turkish and Bulgarian troops, and in Turkish prisoners of the Greek and of the other allied countries. The risk of transmission of the disease from prisoners to Greek soldiers was averted thanks to the timely and effective measures adopted by the Military Medical Service. According to Professor Konstantinos Christomanos (1841–1906) ‘the major cleanliness of the Greek soldiers and …
Footnotes
Contributors IV and AD headed the research, wrote the paper and provided the photos. EM contributed to the research, contributed to writing of the paper and reviewed the paper.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.