An acute purulent inflammation surrounded by soft tissue, with symptoms of fever, sharp pain, and swelling. The condition occurred on a mass scale among prisoners of Auschwitz. It was caused, in exhausted prisoners with vitamin deficiencies (Muselmann), by the body’s inability to combat bacterial infections arising as a result of minor wounds, blisters on the feet, etc. An untreated phlegmon often led to fatal whole‑body infection. Effective treatment should rely on lancing the abscess, cleaning the wound, and applying sterile bandages and drains, all of which was usually impossible in camp conditions. Prisoners therefore tried to treat themselves by cutting the swollen skin with sharpened scraps of tin. Only in later years, when conditions in the camp hospitals improved slightly, did prisoner doctors begin carrying out the needed procedure on a larger scale.

(Mini dictionary of terms from the history of Auschwitz)