People with swollen legs, covered in sores, could not sit: “When such a person sat down, the skin broke, liquid began to run down their legs, the smell was awful and they felt unbearable pain.”13 Children developed swollen bellies, and heads that seemed too heavy for their necks.14 One woman remembered a girl who was so emaciated that “one could see how her heart was beating beneath the skin.”15 M. Mishchenko described the final stages: “General weakness increases, and the sufferer cannot sit up in bed or move at all. He falls into a drowsy state which may last for a week, until his heart
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