Page 64 - Stradanje i humanizam

become a ward of the Drina military hospital. With modest supplies of medicines and food they barely
managed to accommodate around 400 patients in their care. Following the outbreak of the typhus
epidemic in the second half of January 1915, everything started to take a dire outlook. Doctor
Cookingham wrote about it in a letter to his family. “For the first month or two, people were still trying
hard to bury the deceased in a decent way. At that time, only 50 to 75 people died per day. Later, when
the rate reached 150 dead per day, and a large part of the population was down with fever, it was no
longer feasible. They only loaded the bodies like logs on wagons and transported them. Hearses drove
around the town as often as they could. The bodies were thrown on them, and the gloomy messengers
went on to the next house. Once full, the wagon would drive out of the town. I have seen them driving
along the street; sometimes there would be a head hanging down, and arms and legs protruding from the
sides. The bodies were thrown into a pit outside the town and quickly filled up with the ground. Then the
wagon and the exhausted horse would go back to start the tour again. The miseries and suffering in
Valjevo are indescribable.“ 39
They saw that there was no one who could take care of the sick, and they accepted the heavy
workload in the Grammar School hospital. For doctor Cook it was too late and they could do nothing,
but doctor Cookingham recovered with their help. The hospital where they came was designed for 250
patients, but at the time of their arrival, there were more than 800 people, of which only 70 wounded
soldiers. All the remaining patients were infected. This number later only increased further, regardless
of the high mortality rates. The only doctor who was still on his feet was the Head of the hospital, doctor
Panajotović, who was heroic and took care of the patients around the clock. In the hospital, she found a
large number of Czechs who performed their duties responsibly. With hard work and commitment by
the two of them, they contributed to a great extent to putting the hospital in order as much as possible.
Having constantly been exposed to the typhoid germs, they themselves had fallen ill in early March
1915, but with a great help by a Woolley, a volunteer doctor from Ireland, and doctor Cookingham, they
recovered.
In the most difficult days, the Serbian, foreign and captured doctors stood together, side by side,
trying to save human lives. With the utmost sacrifice, without any regard to their own lives, they tried to
keep hope and maintain the faith in the highest human values. All the flags and colours they carried
when they went to war against each other fell down before an outstretched arm asking for help and the
one who gives it. People were no longer at war against each other, but in a war for survival. In the most
difficult moment, assistance started arriving and it tipped the scale of fate towards human values and the
good. The assistance that was provided was not intended only for the Serbian soldiers and people, and it
was given also to a large number of prisoners who were imprisoned behind the camp wires, to the sick
with who were in the same hospitals and who suffered and died from the same diseases.
They received more than 3,500 applications from the doctors who were interested and among them
the required number of doctors was selected. Among them there were also several famous
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bacteriologist. One of them was Ernest Conseil, a renowned scientist from the Pasteur Institute in
Tunisia. He was already known as the researcher who, together with Professor Nicolle, proved
experimentally that typhoid is transmitted by white lice. Another two of their joint studies, published at
the beginning of 1915, relating to the necessary measures for the protection of the army against typhoid
are also famous. Under the command of Colonel Jaubert, this mission set off from Marseille in mid-
March, and arrived to Serbia in early April 1915. The French focused their work primarily on stopping
the epidemic and treating the sick by allocating their staff to the following seven sectors: Belgrade,
Užice, Valjevo, Kruševac, Kragujevac, Niš, and Zaječar. In each of these towns, they appointed Head of
Sector and the team of doctors who went to outreach visits in pairs to the most remote villages, from
house to house, to small towns, in order to train the population to fight against typhoid. They burnt
infectious material, clothes, blankets, and performed delousing, disinfection, and all other necessary
measures.
The most famous and the most respected member of the mission was Professor Conseil, who came
to Valjevo, to the District Hospital, as Head of Sector. From the letters he wrote to his family it is evident
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that on 7 April he arrived to Niš, and on 8 April 1915 to Valjevo. There is no doubt that most measures
prescribed and performed by the teams of doctors in all the sectors were recommended by him. At
railway stations there were often vaccination, fumigation and disinfection organized, and even bathing
of travellers and soldiers in improvised or special bathrooms. They were the first doctors who had left
urban areas and began to provide help in most remote villages as well. Always in pairs, two of them and
a translator, the French doctors crossed all of the Valjevo villages and all of Serbia. From the letters of
Conseil's colleague, Georges Blanc, who himself was a volunteer doctor, it can be seen that before their
arrival the hospital was quite neglected, and that it lacked good governance. In Consail's official file, it is
indicated that he was Head of the Bacteriological Laboratory in Valjevo, as well as a doctor in the
hospital. The French mission is to District Hospital took over from doctor Tienhoven's team, and they
remained there until the retreat across Albania. During the retreat, due to extreme cold, doctor Conseil
lost his toes. Together with Hirsfeld, he was one of the biggest names in bacteriology at the time. It is
known that in Valjevo he produced vaccines against typhoid and cholera which he used to inoculate the
population, soldiers, and the prisoners.
In mid-May 1915, the Danish mission, including the extraordinary doctor Theodor Mollgaard, who
was a relative of the Danish royal family, arrived to Valjevo as well, but they did not stay there for long.
Already from 26 of June 1915, they were deployed at the hospital in Knjaževac.
One of the most famous and most numerous missions that came to Valjevo was the SWH mission led
by Dr Alice Hutchinson. The mission was large, fully equipped, with 40 tents of which six served as
large hospital rooms for patients, and the remaining were used for other hospital needs. Smaller tents
were designed for pharmacy, warehouses, kitchen, bathroom, sanitary ward, and of course sleeping and
living accommodations for the staff. The hospital was located on Krušik, near the Fifth Regiment hos-
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