Lice and Men: Trench Fever and Trench Life in the AIF.

[206thCEF]

Trench Fever is an unusual disease in that it was first discovered in 1915 and disappeared in 1918 when the war ended. It was again reported during the 2nd World War when it affected the Germans on the Russian Front but it is now a very rare disease, warranting only a single short paragraph in Harrison's 1994 Textbook of Medicine. However, according to the 1948 Edition of Lord Horder's Encyclopedia of Medical Practice, it infected some 800,000 Allied soldiers in the Great War! Butler's Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services describes it as "a disease of squalor" of which more later.

http://www.vlib.us/medical/liceand.htm

Joe