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The City Orphanage in Berlin, which is really a home for dependent children, whether
they are actually orphans or not, is not supposed to take any but healthy children, but it is impossible
now to reject the tuberculous and rachitic, for they are too numerous. It has long been the rule
here to give the Pirquet skin test to the children to determine the presence of tuberculous infection.
Before the war this test was positive for 10 per cent., but now is positive for 30 per cent., while infection
has increased threefold, actual illness has increased fivefold, as shown by the number of cases of skin,
gland, bone, and pulmonary tuberculosis. In Halle there is ten times as much skin tuberculosis as before
the war, and in Frankfurt they showed us cases of pulmonary tuberculosis in babies sometimes hardly
ever seen in other countries. The curse of tuberculosis, or rather mortality from this disease, in the
city of Chemnitz shows clearly the influence of the tightened blockade, for while there is little increase
in the first two and a half years of war, there is a sudden rise in 1917 and a still greater rise in 1918.
The conditions revealed by this report are painful reading, but it is curious that these American
authors attribute all the suffering they describe to the " hunger blockade," ignoring the fact that the
ruthless and barbarous submarine campaign rendered that reprisal necessary for the preservation of
free peoples. They also omit any reference to the fact that up to the very last day of fighting there
was never any shortage of oils and fats for the manufacture of high explosives and other munitions.
The report is being used as a means of exciting pity for Germany, but unfortunately while our allies
still endure terrible privations as a result of German criminality, no preference in the matter of supplies
can be extended to the nation that is responsible for the shortage of shipping which has threatened
Europe with starvation."
" Medical Officer," 30.8.19.
" The general question of relief in German.Austria is at present being studied by the Supreme
Economic Council, whose headquarters are in Paris. The British department of that Council has
recently forwarded to the British Medical Association an appeal to the public and to the medical profession
of the United Kingdom on behalf of Vienna hospitals and of Vienna as a centre of medical study
and research. The appeal has been drawn up by representative Viennese medical men, and is supported
by the chiefs of the British and American Missions and by Dr. Hector Munro, who is now engaged on
relief work in that city. After touching on the value and importance of the hospital training and the
research work into the cause and cure of disease conducted in Vienna during the past century and a
half, the history of the Vienna medical school is briefly outlined. " The prestige of the Vienna medical
school was never higher and the number of its students never greater than was the case in 1914, on the
eve of the war. The contrast between its situation then and the situation of the school to.day is both
striking and tragic. Now that the war is over, vast problems confront the Vienna medical school. War
was terrible, with its wounded and its invalids, its series of epidemics and infectious diseases—typhoid,
dysentery, spotted fever, and cholera. All of these diseases reduced the population and enfeebled those
who remained. Tuberculosis has developed into a deadly and acute disease, particularly in Vienna.
Nephritis is present and has taken vast toll. As the result of continuous underfeeding an,d hunger,
dropsy, rickets, scurvy, and Barlow's disease—a disease due to malnutrition—the wards of the Vienna
hospitals are filled to overflowing. In one clinic alone there were 18 cases of spontaneous fracture in
adults due to continuous starvation." To this appeal is appended a report on the health of the city of
Vienna, drawn up by Dr. Boehm, the principal medical officer. In addition to the urgent need for special
food in large quantities, it would appear that there is an absolute shortage of such hospital supplies as
soap, surgical dressings, and essential drugs. The total number of deaths from tuberculosis is given as
6,233 in 1914 and 11,741 in 1918 ; and Dr. Hilda Clark, who is engaged with Dr. Hector Munro in investigating
the state of the hospitals of German.Austria and Hungary, is informed by the Vienna Health
Department that the death rate from this disease for the past three months has been higher than it was
for the corresponding months last year. With regard to the question of what is being done, we are
informed that the American Children's Relief Organisation gives 100,000 children one meal a day in
Vienna. The Internationale Spitalshilfe Aktion has been formed from leading Vienna practitioners and
representatives of Great Britain and America to distribute help given for the hospitals. Through this
committee arrangements are being made for a better method of supplying eggs and milk to the patients.
The American Red Cross also is supplying a considerable quantity of Red Cross stores to relieve the
distress in Vienna, but we understand that much more remains to be done to cope with the grave increase
in tuberculosis and rickets. The needs of the moment appear to be food, fuel, clothing, and hospital
supplies."
" British Medical Journal," 13.9.19.