Proquest Dissertations

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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 UMI THE FRENCH EXPERIENCE OF PANDEMIC INFLUENZA DURING THE GREAT WAR DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Joseph Allen Talbert, B A , M A ***** The Ohio State University 2000 Dissertation Committee: \ Approved by Professor John A M. Rothney, Adviser Professor Leila J Rupp Adviser Professor James R Bartholomew 1 Department o f Histoi UMI Number: 9982989 Copyright 2000 by Talbert, Joseph Allen All rights reserved. UMI UMI Microform 9982989 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rigtits reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT The influenza pandemic that occurred during the first World war killed more people, and more quickly, than any other disease in history. By a conservative estimate, 25-40 million people died worldwide from August 1918 to January 1919. Yet despite the magnitude of the pandemic’s death toll, little historical research has been undertaken on the subject. Historians have tended to avoid the study of influenza in favor of diseases such as plague, cholera, and smallpox, whose aetiologies are better understood; moreover, the historical research that has been conducted in this field tends to be strictly descriptive. For a comprehensive account of the French experience of the pandemic during 1918-19, this study outlines the microbiology and epidemiology of influenza, offering a rationale for the importance of establishing connections among microbiology, evolutionary biology, and historical epidemiology to better comprehend the disease. An account of the French experience of the Spanish influenza follows. Issues for consideration include how government agencies pursued policies of quarantine or prevention, the therapies that local and national medical authorities experimented with and recommended, the public’s acceptance of or resistance to these policies and therapies, and the disease’s death rates by cohort. Analyzing the preparedness of the French Army and the expeditionary forces of its allies for combating the 'flu, this project defines the measures undertaken to cope with the disease, and demonstrates that if France did no worse than any other European state in battling the Spanish 'flu, neither was France any more successful in its attempts to stem the tide or mitigate the effects of the disease. The study also offers suggestions for further research into the peculiar behavior of the Spanish influenza during the war. For, despite its location at the epicenter of the disease, France managed to dodge the worst effects of the pandemic, suffering markedly fewer fatalities than other European nations. Offering the hypothesis that the movement of the French troops both increased the disease’s virulence and served as the means for exporting it to other countries, the author recommends collaborative research between historians and biologists for further insights into the influenza pandemic and its migration patterns. Ill Dedicated to my son, James Philip Talbert IV VITA 5 January 1951 ...................................................Bom - Houston, Texas 1988 ......................................................................M A , History, The Ohio State University 1988 - 1991 ..........................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 1991 - 1998 ..........................................................Lecturer in History, The Pontifical College Josephinum 1991 - 1992 ..........................................................Instructor, The Ohio State University at Marion, The Marion Correctional Institute 1991 - 1993 ..........................................................Lecturer, Columbus State Community College 1992 - 1994 ..........................................................Instructor, Otterbein College 1993 - 1999 ..........................................................Instructor, The Ohio State University 1998 - 2000 ..........................................................Assistant Director, West European Studies Program, The Ohio State University 18 January 2000 ................................................... Died - Worthington, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Fields; Contemporary French History Minor Fields: History of Science and Medicine History of Modem Europe History of Africa V TABLE OF CONTENTS Page A bstract.............................................................................................................................................Ü D edication .................................................................................................................................... iv V ita ....................................................................................................................................................V Chapters 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... I 2. The Microbiology and Epidemiology of Influenza ............................................................48 3. The French Experience of Spanish Influenza ..................................................................... 73 4. The French Export of Influenza: A Recommendation for Further Research ................................................................. 121 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 143 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 150 VI CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION By April 1918 France had been at war 44 months, and, despite the interment of the union sacrée with the formation of Clemenceau’s ministry in November 1917, France had found at last its "patriotic war," burying, as many hoped, the legacy whereby "... she fought no war that was not, sooner or later, cross-bred with civil war."' But the toll of this effort had been extravagant. The French army had mobilized 7,322,000 men, the navy another 156,000; o f these 1,486,000 were listed as killed in action, missing or taken prisoner by the close of 1917, and over two million had been evacuated for wounds or ‘Marc Ferro, The Great War, I9I4-19I8. Translated by Nicole Stone. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 9. A burial from their perspective; from ours, perhaps, just cold storage. The sacred union had been fostered by the smooth mobilization that took place between the 2"** and the 15* of August 1914 and the willingness of the authorities to set aside the "Carnet B, " the list of socialists and other presumed subversives to be arrested upon the declaration of mobilization and a state of siege (the latter was decreed on 2 August and affirmed in the law of 5 August). For an evocative account of the July crisis and the August mobilization, see Richard Cobb, "France and the Coming of the War," in R. J. W. Evans and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, eds , The Coming o f the First World War. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 125-44. The policy of national unity was confirmed in René Viviani's Ministry (26 August 1914-29 October 1915), a Ministry that included the socialists Marcel Sembat as Minister of Public Works and Jules Guesde as Minister without portfolio. 1 sickness.’ Over 32,000 square kilometers of the ten northeastemmost departments that lay along the invasion route of 1914 had been overrun, producing a tide of refugees that would reach 1.6 million by September 1918.^ The occupation deprived France of more than 80% of its iron ore and cast iron production, three-quarters of its coal reserve and over 60 per cent of its steel-making capacity/ And, with the retirement of the German - See Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre. (Paris; Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1931), pp. 93-94, 109, 419. These figures are complete as of 31 December, 1917, but the number mobilized does

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