Trench fever is a moderately serious
disease, transmitted by
body lice. It infected the armies in Flanders, France, Poland, Galicia, Italy, Salonika, Macedonia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in
World War I (including
J.R.R. Tolkien) and the German army in Russia during
World War II. From 1915-1918 between one-fifth and one-third of all British troops reported ill were caused by Trench Fever while about one-fifth of ill German and Austrian troops had the disease. The disease persists among the homeless. Outbreaks have been documented, for example, in
Seattle and
Baltimore in the
United States among injection drug users and in
Marseille,
France and
Burundi.
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Named for the German physician Heinrich Werner (not the Werner of Werner’s syndrome) and the Swiss physician Wilhelm His, Jr. (who described the bundle of His in the heart). See Fever, Wolhynia.