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This was before the discovery of antibiotics, so many diseases were much harder or even impossible to treat then. Usually the best answer was good hygiene, good and fresh food and enough rest, at least if circumstances allowed, which they often didn't. Contagious diseases could only be stopped by getting the infected soldiers away from the rest as quickly as possible. And some afflictions like trench foot, caused by standing all day in wet and muddy trenches without an opportunity to regularly dry your feet and get dry socks and boots, simply came with being on duty in the rainy season.

But in the existing situation where hundreds of thousands of men were squeezed together in cramped and unsanitary circumstances, with medication still pretty primitive, disease was a constant companion.

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11y ago

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