following description which I have taken from a Latin dissertation
(translated also into German) of the surgeon of a Wuerttembergian regiment,
Ch. Io. von Scherer, who had served through the whole campaign and in the
year 1820 had submitted this dissertation, "Historia Morborum, qui in
Expeditione Contra Russiam Anno 1812 Facta Legiones Wuerttembergicas
invaserunt, praesertim eorum qui frigore orti sunt," to the Medical
Faculty, presided over by F. G. Gmelin, to obtain the degree of doctor of
medicine.

The diseases which befell the soldiers in Russia extended over the whole
army. Von Scherer, however, gives his own observations only, which he had
made while serving in the Wuerttembergian corps of fourteen to fifteen
thousand men.

The expedition into Russia in the year 1812 was divided into ten divisions,
each of these numbering fifty to sixty thousand men, all healthy, robust,
most of them hardened in war. The Wuerttembergians were commanded by
General Count von Scheeler and the French General Marchand; the highest
commander was Marshal Ney.

In the beginning of May, 1812, the great army of Napoleon arrived at the
frontier of Poland, whence it proceeded by forced and most tiresome marches
to the river Niemen, which forms the boundary between Lithuania and Poland,
arriving at the borders of the river in the middle of June.

An immense body of soldiers (500,000) met near the city of Kowno, crossed
the Niemen on pontoons, and formed, under the eyes of the Emperor, in
endless battle line on the other side.

The forced march continued day and night over the sandy soil of Poland. The