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Epidemics in the Holy Land 100 Years Ago

(Times of Israel) Lenny Ben-David - Several years before the catastrophic influenza pandemic that struck the world in 1918, calamitous plagues were killing millions in the Middle East. According to Prof. Melanie Schulze-Tanielian of the University of Michigan, "Widespread epidemics consumed Ottoman soldiers and civilians alike during the Great War....Typhus, malaria, and relapsing fever, transmitted via disease-infected lice, mosquitoes, and ticks, were the deadliest assailants, followed by bacterial diseases like dysentery and typhoid." According to an account by a German medical officer, "Of the 10,000 troops serving in the Ottoman division that set off from Istanbul, only 4,635 could make it to Palestine. The rest either became ill or deserted. The ones who reached Palestine were ill and had lost their strength." In 1916 a typhus epidemic killed Jewish soldiers and approximately 100 Jewish laborers in Beersheba. From the writer's forthcoming book, The Secrets of World War I in the Holy Land Revealed in Photographs.
2020-04-03 00:00:00
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