typhus, cholera) had been endemic prior to the war. A direct connection between the First World War and the sudden emergence of epidemics remains diffuse. The context of the First World War created conditions that enabled the fast spread of various viral and bacterial infections. The following section offers an overview of the demographic dimensions of disease-driven destruction and explores its causes. Inevitably, the health of both soldiers at the front and those left at home took a dramatic turn physical destruction, hunger, poverty, soldiers’ constant mobility and non-combatants’ forced displacement determined an environment that supported the development of diseases and other, often interrelated, health crises such as malnutrition. Famine emerged and quickly deepened, and civilians were uprooted and forced to find new homes. The First World War saw entire armies decimated soldiers were injured in battle or physically affected by disease. Further, by 1918, the influenza pandemic crippled theaters of war, as well as neutral territories in and beyond Europe. Bacterial, viral or parasite-based diseases such as malaria, dysentery, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, smallpox, and venereal diseases killed more people than military clashes, and weakened armies and entire societies during the four years of combat. The typhus epidemic was just one of many health crises caused by infectious diseases during the First World War. Lice and typhus, already causing havoc among the military of Austria-Hungary, spread quickly in Serbian territory, infecting and eventually killing civilians. The First World War started formally and weeks of battle followed in this small country, resulting in casualties among soldiers and civilians. In 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire invaded Serbia. In including the post-war period, this overview draws attention to the fluidity and pervasive effects of disease after the formal end of the conflict, as well as to the way it shaped the making of post-war internationalism. Chronologically, the article treats the topic from the early days of the war until its aftermath. This article focuses primarily on planning, intended methods, and the practice of relief. National and international responses to disease at the time were deeply entwined with post-war politics, diplomatic relations, or economic agendas. It moves out from this to view the response shown in state efforts, private initiatives, external humanitarian aid, as well as the international governance of health in the post-war. By looking primarily at epidemic crises, this analysis first explores wartime conditions and the extent of human and material destruction. This article integrates the extant literature in an overview of disease diffusion during the war, its exogenous causes, as well as state and non-state responses to sickness during and immediately after the conflict. Furthermore, there has been recent attention given to health and disease as objects of international governance via institutional networks of relief and rehabilitation. Examples of this are studies that have looked at the nexus between health, disease, nation-building and state-building during and after the war. Historians have explored the social and cultural effects of disease, as well as the place of “the sick,” whether soldiers or civilians, in the realm of policymaking. Some studies have investigated the spread of disease during the First World War through the lens of biological manifestations of illness and the related medical and technological capacity to respond. In the past decades, historians have increasingly treated the theme of “disease in the First World War” by highlighting medicine and technology, the social and cultural effects of disease, as well as the national and international politics of public health.
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