* * * * *
There was another cause of death of which we have not spoken yet: this was
the action of the heat at the campfires. Anxious to warm themselves, most
of the soldiers hastened to bring their limbs near the flame; but this
sudden exposure to extreme heat, after having suffered from the other
extreme--cold--was acting on the feeble circulation in the tissues and
produced gangraene of the feet, the hands, even of the face, causing
paralysis either partial, of the extremities, or general, of the whole
body.
Only those were saved who had been able to keep up their circulation by
means of hot drinks or other stimulants and who, noticing numbness, had
rubbed the affected parts with snow. Those who did not or could not resort
to these precautions found themselves paralyzed, or stricken with sudden
gangraene, in the morning when the camp broke up.
The hospitals of Koenigsberg admitted about 10 thousand soldiers of
Napoleon's army, only a small number of whom had been wounded, most of
them with frozen extremities, who had, as the physicians of that time
called it, a pest, the fever of congelation which was terribly contagious.
The heroic Larrey although exhausted from fatigue had come to these
hospitals to take care of the sick, but he became infected with the
contagion himself and was taken sick.
A great calamity was the want of shoes; we have seen that this was already
felt in Moscow, before they set out on the endless march over ice and snow.
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