4 - PRISONERS AS DISEASE CARRIERS: CASES OF PELLAGRA AND TRACHOMA

Summary

The report of the Committee of Enquiry regarding the prevalence of pellagra amongst Turkish prisoners of war will stand for years to come as a record of one of the best and most scientific enquiries ever accomplished by a nation at war.

Not only did the Committee clear up the problem of pellagra in Egypt, but it has put on record observations that will have to be remembered for everyone who has in future to draw up any diet scale.

The Lancet commenting on the 1918 pellagra investigation The Lancet (8 May 1920), p. 1,027

From neuro-psychiatrists to generalists to epidemiologists, nearly all doctors viewed soldiers returning home – whether from far away provinces or nearby battlefronts – as disease carriers. In 1915, Dr Mazhar Osman, the leading neuropsychiatrist of the time, wrote that military service and wars in distant regions of the empire had always been an avenue for new diseases into Anatolia. As a result, he stated, Anatolia had become home for a number of diseases. Because of their numbers and the lengthy time they spent in contact with foreign populations in distant and strange places, prisoners of war were usually singled out as ‘disease carriers’, bringing back diseases – contagious or non-contagious – they acquired while in prison camps in Russia, Egypt, India and Burma. Neuropsychiatrist Dr Nazım Şakir, by using a process of elimination, linked repatriated prisoners to the appearance of lethargic encephalitis (a brain disease characterised by high fever, headache, sore throat, lethargy and double vision) in Istanbul, which killed a significant number of people in the capital city and beyond.