The northern part of Baden suffered severely in the years 1634–6; Pforzheim lost at least one-third of its inhabitants in consequence of famine and pestilence, while Durlach and Mannheim are also reported to have been attacked.
That part of Hessen lying on the right side of the Rhine was likewise visited by pestilence. In Wimpfen-on-the-Neckar a plague broke out in August, 1635, and in the period between August 12 and December 31 there were 494 deaths there. Bensheim, Zwingenberg, Gernsheim, Babenhausen, and Seligenstadt fared no better. Darmstadt, with 212 deaths in 1633 and 220 deaths in 1634, had an increased mortality, but in 1635 some 2,200 bodies are said to have been buried there; at first it was ‘head-disease’, and afterwards ‘a poisonous pestilence’.
The Lower Main region suffered terribly in the year 1635 from famine and pestilence; the Wetterau, the Palatinate, and Alsace-Lorraine were all attacked. Frankfurt-on-the-Main had been occupied by the Swedes in the latter part of 1631, and after that the mortality increased; whereas in the years 1630–2 the average number of deaths was 1,598, in 1633 it increased to 3,512, in 1634 to 3,421, and in 1635 to 6,943. This includes all the Protestant population, only a part of the Catholic population, and none of the Jews. The large number of country-people who had fled to the city rendered the general condition worse and helped to spread the pestilence. The worst month was September 1635, in which 1,112 persons died. According to a Frankfurt physician, Hörnigk, the crisis came on the fifth or sixth day, while many people contracted the disease not only once, but as many as seven times.[42] We see from this last observation that the various infectious diseases at that time were not distinguished, but were regarded as different stages of one and the same disease.
In near-by Hanau, after it was occupied by the Swedes and Hessians on October 2, 1634, famine and pestilence appeared; in June 1635, an epidemic of bubonic plague broke out there, reaching a climax in August, and gradually disappearing with the beginning of the cold weather. The mortality among the citizens and fugitives was very great, but the statement that 21,000 people died in Hanau is perhaps an exaggeration. Upper Hesse was devastated in 1635 by famine and pestilence; in Giessen, for example, 1,503 people died (according to the grave-diggers’ records), and in Lich, a small fortified town, there were 1,225 deaths, including 22 soldiers and 549 fugitives from the surrounding country.