The Illustrious Dead Quotes

“The rat, which transported bubonic plague, and the louse, which carried typhus, were despised but accepted presences in almost every human society, although the latter could travel places (such as the Arctic) where even the rat couldn’t survive.”
― Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army

“Rickettsia denotes the microbe’s genus, placing it in the bacteria family in the planet’s taxonomy; the name derives from the American pathologist Howard T. Ricketts, who studied—and succumbed to—typhus in 1910. Prowazekii pays tribute to the researcher Stanislaus von Prowazek, an Austrian bacteriologist who also died of typhus in 1915 while trying to unlock its secrets.”
― Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army

“Ninety percent of the population were serfs who could be beaten, killed, transported away from their family, or sold for a gambling debt or as collateral for a loan (a healthy male at the time would fetch between 200 and 500 rubles in the Moscow market; a good-looking young female, several times that).”
― Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army

“Lind’s 1747 experiment looked at scurvy. Twelve sailors who had the illness were divided into six groups. The accommodations and diet of all the sailors were identical, but each received a different remedy: one group received cider; one got seawater; another, “elixir of vitriol”; the fifth group, two oranges and a lemon; and the sixth, a mix of spices with barley water. It was the first documented clinical trial in medical history.”
― Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army

“Therefore I cannot but see and feel that time is passing, and I with it, and yet I would not like to go without performing some great action to serve as a monument to my name. What is lost today will not be found tomorrow and I have done nothing so far to cover myself with glory.”
― Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army

“Nowhere else would Napoleonic troops encounter soldiers who fought as fanatically or bravely when defending a position; a famous epigram said that you not only had to kill the Russian soldier, you had to then push him over.”
― Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army