y not be unmindful of them: "In the last
years of the war, in Austria alone at least 35,000 people died of
tuberculosis, in Vienna alone 12,000. Today we have to reckon with a
number of at least 350,000 to 400,000 people who require treatment for
tuberculosis.... As the result of malnutrition a bloodless generation is
growing up with undeveloped muscles, undeveloped joints, and undeveloped
brain" (_Neue Freie Presse_, May 31, 1919). The Commission of Doctors
appointed by the Medical Faculties of Holland, Sweden, and Norway to
examine the conditions in Germany reported as follows in the Swedish
Press in April, 1919: "Tuberculosis, especially in children, is
increasing in an appalling way, and, generally speaking, is malignant.
In the same way rickets is more serious and more widely prevalent. It is
impossible to do anything for these diseases; there is no milk for the
tuberculous, and no cod-liver oil for those suffering from rickets....
Tuberculosis is assuming almost unprecedented aspects, such as have
hitherto only been known in exceptional cases. The whole body is
attacked simultaneously, and the illness in this form is practically
incurable.... Tuberculosis is nearly always fatal now among adults. It
is the cause of 90 per cent of the hospital cases. Nothing can be done
against it owing to lack of food-stuffs.... It appears in the most
terrible forms, such as glandular tuberculosis, which turns into
purulent dissolution." The following is by a writer in the _Vossische
Zeitung_, June 5, 1919, who accompanied the Hoover Mission to the
Erzgebirge: "I visited large country districts where 90 per cent of all
the children were ricketty and where children of three years are only
beginning to walk.... Accompany me to a school in the Erzgebirge. You
think it is a kindergarten for the little ones. No, these are children
of seven and eight years. Tiny faces, with large dull eyes, overshadowed
by huge puffed, ricketty foreheads, their small arms just skin and bone,
and above the crooked legs with their dislocated joints the swollen,
pointed stomachs of the hunger oedema.... 'You see this child here,' the
physician in charge explained; 'it consumed an incredible amount of
bread, and yet did not get any stronger. I found out that it hid all the
bread it received underneath its straw mattress. The fear of hunger was
so deeply rooted in the child that it collected stores instead of eating
the food: a misguided animal instinct made th