TRENCH FEVER IN THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES

Abstract

Trench fever is a disease that has been recognized and differentiated from other morbid conditions during the recent war. While there is little doubt that it existed previously in some place or places, there is no doubt that to all medical officers it presented new problems in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. There are descriptions of the disease and reports of its occurrence in all armies on the western front. But from the mass of reports it is impossible to determine the original source of the infection or the line of spread from area to area. The constant movement of troops in an army, the ever changing composition of every unit, make epidemiologic studies very difficult and accurate reconstruction of the mode of diffusion of a well known disease virtually impossible. When we consider that on the western and eastern fronts and behind the lines there were troops from nearly every