Page 56 - Stradanje i humanizam

District Court, by the Serbian writer Veljko Petrović, who was a direct participant in the events and who
fought as a volunteer in the Serbian army. Doctor Andra Đurović, who took over this hospital after the
liberation of the town from doctors Bigmeier and Czaki, mentions the hostility between the Serb and
Austrian wounded, who, after unsuccessful attempts of their separation, remained in the end lying in the
same rooms. Other doctors in the hospital were the Czech Jan, the Pole Zbishka, and one ambulance
officer. Doctor Andra Đurović, who had previously recovered from typhoid fever, was assisted by our
doctor Kalenić and a very old medic by the name of Raja. The nurses in the hospital were the sons of the
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famous Viennese families, the son of the famous doctor Kuhrmeier, and the member of the High
Council Von Hulden's son, who had unfortunately died of typhus, like many others.
A set of circumstances led to there being almost exclusively the Austro-Hungarian wounded and
sick in all the hospitals in Valjevo. Their treatment, in addition to the abandoned staff, was taken over by
the Serb medical staff. As long as there was someone left there, and as long as fear and the disease did
not prevent access to the hospitals, the citizens of Valjevo brought various supplies to the sick and
wounded; various gifts, new clothes, sweets, donuts and other pastries, all the things that the soldiers
could want and that would cheer them up. Similarly, the Serb medical staff did so too.
The unexpected retreat of the Austro-Hungarian forces and bad roads had caused somewhat earlier
great difficulties for the Austro-Hungarian authorities in terms of organizing the evacuation of around
12,000 wounded and sick, from approximately 16,000 they had in Valjevo. The railway traffic to
Obrenovac was interrupted, and the patients in sever condition could only be transported by wagons.
Those with minor injuries and those able to walk had to leave Valjevo on foot. Almost no medical
supplies were left, if we take into account the number of the abandoned, on the contrary, huge amounts
of food, tea, coffee and even assistance packages for the wounded were destroyed. In the Austro-
Hungarian hospitals, there was a large number of those suffering from typhoid, especially stomach
typhoid, abandoned. At the same time, the town received a large number of prisoners, as well as Serbian
soldiers, who had already been infected with typhoid. Initially, nobody paid much attention to those
sick. There had been typhoid cases even before, and in the Serbian army, typhoid had been observed by
the end of October, but it had also been observed in the Austro-Hungarian army. Several diaries reveal
that in the military prison camps in Hungary, in October, typhoid had spread among the Serbian
soldiers. Today it is difficult to determine where the infection started. Typhoid has always been present
in the Carpathians, where some of the Austro-Hungarian army units came from, and in the regions
towards Albania, where they also mobilized soldiers. Recurrent typhoid had been wide spread in
Bosnia and Herzegovina even before, and typhus was present periodically, during the Great War. The
fact is that among the Austro-Hungarian soldiers abandoned in Valjevo the infection had assumed great
proportions, while in the Serbian ranks, it was very contained. No Serbian soldier suffering from
typhoid stayed in the Valjevo hospitals which were handed over on 15 November 1914. Doctor
Tienhoven, who was very familiar with the development of the disease, and who monitored it
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continuously, was explicit: typhus was brought by the Austro-Hungarian soldiers. If, given hindsight,
the first source of the disease is undetermined, the reasons for the epidemic outbreak are quite clear.
In Valjevo there were tens of thousands of prisoners whose evacuation to the interior was in
progress, and the winning Serbian army was moving through Valjevo with their wounded, and all that
created the most favourable conditions possible for the development of the epidemic. One has to add
also the columns of refugees returning home, passing through the town. That autumn, there was an
incredible proliferation of lice. The soldiers of the both warring parties, during the months-long
struggles, could not pay sufficient attention to hygiene measures or change their clothes in a timely
manner. Blankets, sheets, bandages on the wounded were scattered everywhere. Effective chemical
agents for their destruction did not exist, and various mixtures and the gas for lighting which they used
to apply on their skin were used as a repellent more because of their unpleasant and strong smell. The
lice proved to be resistant also to the boiling water, and after the clothes was boiled at 100 degrees
Celsius, they were still alive. Even though it had already been known from the professional sources that
white lice can carry spotted fever, and even in these parts, J. Kujačić wrote about the research results of
the French physicians Charles Nicolle and Ernest Conseil, the Serbian doctors, otherwise extremely
professional and capable, were unfortunately uninformed. These studies had shown experimentally
that typhus white lice transmitted typhus. Preoccupied by the war and the aftermaths of the Balkan wars
that were followed almost immediately by the outbreak of the Great War, and at the same time a
negligible number of epidemiologists, they did not know what how this terrible disease was
transmitted. Previously they had fought it mainly with sanitary measures. It has to be admitted that in
the Serbian army there were foreigners bacteriologists, but that they were unaware of the
aforementioned research or they did not fully believe in these claims. Such studies had been published
even before, but truth be told, they had not proven experimentally as the Professor Nicolle's study.
What is probably the closest to the truth is that it takes some time for a research to be confirmed and
to be accepted and implemented. The suffering of the Serbian people, their enormous sacrifices and the
results in the fight against typhoid served to confirm that study. That is why it is not surprising that the
Nobel prize for this study was awarded nearly 20 years after its publication.While recurrent typhoid
was even more easily transmitted than typhus, the carriers were the same. Unfortunately, the third
trouble in the form of stomach typhoid had already been present in the territory of Serbia. The
conditions for the development of stomach typhoid, which had already been wide spread in the Austro-
Hungarian army, have already been described in detail. Suffice it to say that it spread through
contaminated water and food or by direct contact in unhygienic conditions. Over a hundred thousand
people had passed through and around Valjevo on several occasions, and after the Battle at Kolubara, in
the town and in its surrounding area, there was around 60,000 prisoners and a huge number of the
wounded. All conditions had been created for a major epidemic and it broke out. Specifically, Serbia
was hit by several epidemics of typhoid which was manifested through its three aspects, spotted typhus,
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