'46 The Army also established divisional baths to turn lice-ridden men into clean soldiers, with the aim being to wash every man at least once every 2 weeks.
The British also developed a combination of naphthalene, creosote, and iodoform made into a paste which could be applied to the seams of uniforms with a good result of eliminating lice in just a few hours.
Lice Infestation
Men scratching at their louse-ridden skin and inspecting the seams of their uniforms for the parasites became a familiar sight. Unable to keep either themselves or their clothes clean, the men became lousy – and it was very difficult to get rid of the lice once they had them.
Fortunately for the lice population, if not for their hosts, conditions of trench warfare proved ideal for their rapid spread. Of the three types of lice - head, pubic and body - the latter was far and away the most common. Lice could only thrive in warm conditions - which was provided by body heat and clothing.
Pests and Pain
In 1918, doctors also identified lice as the cause of trench fever, which plagued the troops with headaches, fevers, and muscle pain.
Medieval folklore suggests that lard was used to try and suffocate lice and nits off of a scalp. Others propose simply keeping the hair combed through and clean was of so little a priority that no one even bothered with lice.
Robert Sherwood's main trench annoyance was lice, another constant among soldiers. Filthy, wet clothing welcomed these pests, where they lodged in seams and caused constant itching.
'Cooties' was the nickname American soldiers gave to body lice – the itchy little bugs that burrowed into skin, hair, clothing, blankets and just about anything made of natural materials. For many soldiers, cooties were as relentless as their human enemies.
How did my child get head lice? Head-to-head contact with an already infested person is the most common way to get head lice. Head-to-head contact is common during play at school, at home, and elsewhere (sports activities, playground, slumber parties, camp).
The oldest physical evidence of head lice on a human was a nit found on the hair of a 10,000-year-old body at an archeological site in Brazil. Lice combs have been found in the tombs of Egyptian royalty, and even Cleopatra was said to have solid gold lice combs buried with her.
Because the active ingredients have remained the same all these years, new generations of head lice have become immune to them. Once lice become immune, the product no longer works. Scientists call this resistance.
However, louse-borne typhus killed 2–3 million soldiers and civilians on the Eastern Front, and the war's end in November 1918 was hastened by an influenza pandemic that had begun in January 1918 and eventually claimed the lives of an estimated 50 million.
Pubic lice are 'here to stay' and will not become extinct, in part because fewer people wax their pubic hair, experts have said.
When Victorians were infested with head lice they would visit the local bathhouse to receive an arsenic and quicklime treatment. During this treatment the different chemicals would burn off the hair weather it is on their head or the entire body.
The stink of war
Then there was the smell. Stinking mud mingled with rotting corpses, lingering gas, open latrines, wet clothes and unwashed bodies to produce an overpowering stench. The main latrines were located behind the lines, but front-line soldiers had to dig small waste pits in their own trenches.
The soldier fired into No Man's Land, the area between the enemy trenches. Soldiers were ordered to keep firing even if they did not see anything. This was called the “morning hate.” The constant fire would keep the enemy from sneaking up on the trench.
“We've discovered the 'smoking louse' that reveals direct contact between two early species of humans,” probably in Asia about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, says study leader Dale Clayton, a professor of biology at the University of Utah. “Kids today have head lice that evolved on two species of cavemen.
Although there is a very slight possibility that you could get lice from an inanimate object, such as a brush or a pillow case, almost all cases of head lice occur through direct head to head contact with someone who is infested. The longer answer goes back over 800,000 years.
It was estimated that 97% of the soldiers in the trenches had lice. Trench conditions made it perfect for lice to thrive. A female louse can lay up to a dozen eggs and they would hatch in one to two weeks. It wasn't until 1918 that doctors attributed “trench fever” to lice.
Classic trench fever is caused by Bartonella quintana, which is carried predominately by a vector body louse. B. quintana reproduces in the intestinal lumen of the louse and then transmits the disease via inoculation of contaminated feces into exposed skin or conjunctivae.
Cats and terriers were kept by soldiers in the frontline trenches to help free them of disease-carrying rats. The terriers were actually very effective in killing rats.
These latrines were trench toilets. They were usually pits dug into the ground between 1.2 metres and 1.5 metres deep. Two people who were called sanitary personnel had the job of keeping the latrines in good condition for each company.
Humans caught pubic lice, aka "the crabs," from gorillas roughly three million years ago, scientists now report. Rather than close encounters of the intimate kind, researchers explained humans most likely got the lice, which most commonly live in pubic hair, from sleeping in gorilla nests or eating the apes.
Unlike head lice, body lice are most often attracted to individuals with poor hygiene. Similar to head lice, body lice are highly contagious and can be spread through contact with an infected person, including by borrowing their clothes or sharing a bed or furniture that is infested.