DOCSLIB.ORG

The Spanish Flu

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Spanish Flu through electron microscopes, would that actually than normal for the elderly. The common have empowered them to halt the pandemic? explanation is that this strain of influenza was so There was no cure for the disease then, or now. new that it startled its victims' immune systems Vaccines? Another generation would pass before into overreaction, and the more vigorous the even partially effective vaccines against victim, the greater and deadlier the overreaction. influenza were developed. Even if all the The defensive swelling of membranes and knowledge and technology to produce flu increased secretion of fluids of the respiratory vaccine had been at hand in 1918, would it have system went to extremes in young adults, filling been possible to produce it in sufficient quantity their lungs with liquid until they drowned. and to distribute it across oceans and continents Overstimulation of the immune system is a in time to stop the swiftly spreading breath- plausible theory, but we could subject it to borne pandemic? Even today, when similar rigorous testing only if something like the 19 18 questions are asked each time a new virus returned. strain of the virus appears, the answer falls short of This distinctive influenza epidemic swept over being a confident "yes.” the world in three major waves during 1918 and 1919. We cannot be sure where and when the The influenza of the 1900s is still something of an initial wave in the spring of 1918 started, but the enigma, but the influenza that was sweeping around earliest scientific and statistical evidence points the world at the time of the Armistice ending to the United States in March 1918. It attracted World War I remains profoundly so. It killed tens very little attention because pneumonic of millions, usually by opening the way for complications were rare and deaths even rarer. secondary bacterial infections, such as those of Initially, the flu seemed no more than just another Pfeiffer's bacillus. Today, we presume that such respiratory disease of the kind that so often infections can be controlled with antibiotics. But a circulates at that time of year. Only later did the significant fraction of those who died in the statisticians notice that an unusually large pandemic of 1918-19 did not live long enough after proportion of the relatively few victims of the the onset of illness to contract a secondary spring of 1918 had been young adults. infection. They turned slate blue in a couple of days and died of viral pneumonia. Even more disturbing THE FIRST WAVE was the fact that the Spanish flu was especially The first wave that spread across North America dangerous to young adults for reasons that have in March and April temporarily disrupted the been plausibly, but never definitely, explained. operation of some military camps and a few factories and then disappeared. However, as it Although influenza did not significantly affect waned in North America, it rose to greater mortality in the United States until September heights in the Old World than had been 1918, its impact was so tremendous during the fall experienced at any time since the previous and early winter of that year that it skewed the influenza pandemics of 1889 and 1890. distribution of age-specific deaths into According to the record (by no means as unprecedented proportions. Ever since the U.S. complete in 1918 as today), the disease in Europe Office of Vital Statistics started publishing first reached epidemic proportions in April in statistics on the age incidence of influenza deaths, France. It swept across Europe in the spring and the distribution has been high at the extremes of summer, attacking troops indiscriminately on infancy and old age and very low in between. In both sides and interfering with military 1918, however, age-specific death rates were high operations. (General Erich von Ludendorff for the very young, higher yet for 20-to-40-year- blamed the flu, among other factors, for the olds, and lower 4 The Spanish Flu and Its Legacy .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1918/19: 100 Years On
    ESSAYS Ewald Frie 1918/19: 100 YEARS ON Open Futures 1918/19 – War and victory, collapse and defeat, revolution and reform, peace and re- organisation, civil war and violence, famine and Spanish flu and much else. The elements can be separated analytically, and many of them have been analysed individually in a historical context. They have been interpreted and incorporated into the narratives of revolution research, the history of warfare and violence, peace research, the history of diseases and epidemics. But the historical dynamics of 1918/19 resulted from the interplay of the various elements in very different constellations. 1918/19 is therefore a challeng- ing anniversary for a historical scholarship that is exploring new conceptual territory: – spatially: leaving the construct of the nation state and instead ›playing with scales‹1 from the local to the global; – temporally: departing from era- and progress-based master narratives and instead ›zooming in and out‹ and playing with temporal perspectives;2 – conceptually: departing from conceptual constructs due to the blurring of categories like ›crisis‹3 or ›revolution‹4 and instead focusing on a broad range of phenomena of social transformation on the premise of ›multidimensional understandings of emergence and destabilization‹.5 1 E.g. James Retallack (ed.), Imperial Germany 1871–1918, Oxford 2008. 2 E.g. Emily S. Rosenberg (ed.), A World Connecting. 1870–1945, Cambridge 2012 (A History of the World, ed. by Akira Iriye and Jürgen Osterhammel). 3 Cf. Thomas Mergel (ed.), Krisen verstehen. Historische und kulturwissenschaftliche Annäherungen, Frankfurt a.M. 2012, pp. 9-22, and the Leibniz Research Alliance ›Crises in a Globalised World‹: <http://www.leibniz-krisen.de/en/start/>.
    [Show full text]
  • The Forgotten Fronts the First World War Battlefield Guide: World War Battlefield First the the Forgotten Fronts Forgotten The
    Ed 1 Nov 2016 1 Nov Ed The First World War Battlefield Guide: Volume 2 The Forgotten Fronts The First Battlefield War World Guide: The Forgotten Fronts Creative Media Design ADR005472 Edition 1 November 2016 THE FORGOTTEN FRONTS | i The First World War Battlefield Guide: Volume 2 The British Army Campaign Guide to the Forgotten Fronts of the First World War 1st Edition November 2016 Acknowledgement The publisher wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the following organisations in providing text, images, multimedia links and sketch maps for this volume: Defence Geographic Centre, Imperial War Museum, Army Historical Branch, Air Historical Branch, Army Records Society,National Portrait Gallery, Tank Museum, National Army Museum, Royal Green Jackets Museum,Shepard Trust, Royal Australian Navy, Australian Defence, Royal Artillery Historical Trust, National Archive, Canadian War Museum, National Archives of Canada, The Times, RAF Museum, Wikimedia Commons, USAF, US Library of Congress. The Cover Images Front Cover: (1) Wounded soldier of the 10th Battalion, Black Watch being carried out of a communication trench on the ‘Birdcage’ Line near Salonika, February 1916 © IWM; (2) The advance through Palestine and the Battle of Megiddo: A sergeant directs orders whilst standing on one of the wooden saddles of the Camel Transport Corps © IWM (3) Soldiers of the Royal Army Service Corps outside a Field Ambulance Station. © IWM Inside Front Cover: Helles Memorial, Gallipoli © Barbara Taylor Back Cover: ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ at the Tower of London © Julia Gavin ii | THE FORGOTTEN FRONTS THE FORGOTTEN FRONTS | iii ISBN: 978-1-874346-46-3 First published in November 2016 by Creative Media Designs, Army Headquarters, Andover.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Pawnshops in Risk Coping in Early Twentieth-Century Japan∗ Tatsuki Inoue†
    The role of pawnshops in risk coping in early twentieth-century Japan∗ Tatsuki Inoue† Abstract This study examines the role of pawnshops as a risk-coping device in prewar Japan. Using data on pawnshop loans for more than 250 municipalities and exploiting the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic as a natural experiment, we find that the adverse health shock increased the total amount of loans from pawnshops. This is because those who regularly relied on pawnshops borrowed more money from them than usual to cope with the adverse health shock, and not because the number of people who used pawnshops increased. Keywords: Pawnshop; Risk-coping strategy; Borrowing; Influenza pandemic; Prewar Japan ∗ I would like to express my gratitude to Tetsuji Okazaki, Kota Ogasawara, and participants at the Economic History Society Annual Conference 2019 at Queen’s University Belfast and 2019 Japanese Economic Association Spring Meeting at Musashi University for their helpful comments. This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (Grant Number: 17J03825). Any errors are my own. † Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo, Akamon General Research Building, 3F 353, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan. E-mail: inoue- [email protected]. 1 Introduction Most industrialized countries were characterized by huge income inequality before World War II (Piketty 2014). Since formal systems of social insurance were underdeveloped, the poor were more vulnerable to unforeseen accidents such as illness than today’s poor people in developed countries. Furthermore, an increase in migration removed people from the traditional informal social insurance systems provided by their local communities (Gorsky 1998).
    [Show full text]
  • The Spanish Flu and the First World War: a Historical Analysis of the Pandemic’S Impact on the Conduct of War and Its Lessons for the British Army of 2020
    CHACR IN DEPTH BRIEFING CIRCULATION: PUBLIC 6 MAY 2020 The Spanish Flu and the First World War: A Historical Analysis of the Pandemic’s Impact on the Conduct of War and its Lessons for the British Army of 2020 Soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, ill with Spanish flu at a hospital ward at Camp Funston . From Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine The influenza pandemic, also known as the Spanish Flu, which hit the World the 1918 and last- ed until 1920, was the deadliest outbreak of disease in the 20th century. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact that the pandemic had on the belligerent nations of the First World War and, in particular, their armies. How were the armies affected, what impact did the pan- demic have on the ability to fight, and what measures did the armies take to contain the vi- rus? Last, but not least, the study will offer some possible consequences and lessons for the British Army of today. Considering that CHACR supports the British Army, it is fitting that the emphasis lies on the UK experience of the Spanish Flu; however, other armies and nations are also taken into consideration to present a more all-encompassing picture of the situation and challenges that the Spanish Flu presented at the end of the First World War. IN DEPTH BRIEFING Page 2 In order to answer the questions above, the study is divided into three parts. Part one presents an overview of the Spanish Flu pandemic and thus provides the context for the following parts.
    [Show full text]
  • “Pandemic 1918” Study Guide Questions
    “Pandemic 1918” Study Guide Questions “Pandemic 1918!” is an article about the experiences of King County residents during the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. The virus, nicknamed the Spanish Flu, arrived just as the First World War was ending. It is thought to have infected over 500 million people worldwide. This activity is designed for readers in 7th grade and above. Questions can be used for discussion or as writing prompts. You can find the original article from December 2014 on Renton History Museum’s Newsletters Page. 1. Today’s scientists and historians are not sure where the Spanish Flu originated, but it is unlikely that it actually began in Spain. Why was the epidemic called the Spanish Flu? 2. How did health officials in the state of Washington prepare for the arrival of the Spanish Flu? 3. Jessie Tulloch observed firsthand how Seattle adapted to the flu. How did everyday life in Seattle change? 4. On November 11, 1918, the Allied Powers and Germany signed a treaty that officially brought World War I to a close. This day was called Armistice Day, and in modern times it is celebrated as Veteran’s Day in the United States. Why was the first Armistice Day a concern for public health officials? 1 5. According to health officials at the time, the best place for treating the Spanish Flu was at home. Patients were treated in their homes with the aid of family members and traveling nurses and doctors. However, some of the infected individuals had to go to Renton Hospital for treatment.
    [Show full text]
  • Thesis FINAL VERSION Main Body
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarBank@NUS A PLAGUE O’ BOTH YOUR HOUSES: MEDICINE, POWER, AND THE GREAT FLU OF 1918-1919 IN BRITAIN AND SINGAPORE LEE NURENEE (B.A. (Hons.), NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2011 Acknowledgements * To A/P Tim Barnard, for agreeing to supervise me and for giving me the latitude to grow as a researcher as well as the guidance to develop as a historian. I am grateful for his insights into the field of environmental history, and for his timely and useful feedback. This venture into the morbid stuff of the past would not have been possible without his support. To all my professors, who have taught and mentored me towards becoming a better student, historian, researcher, and tutor. The work done at the graduate level can be intense and isolating, but a few people really helped me make sense of the whole process. For their constructive criticism, advice, words of encouragement, and suggestions on various potentialities of research, I have Prof. Merle Ricklefs, Dr. Mark Emmanuel, Dr. Quek Ser Hwee, and Dr. Susan Ang to thank. To my fellow denizens of the History grad room – purveyors of fine humour and junk food (and oftentimes junk humour and fine food) – I owe many thanks for making my M.A. experience such a warm and memorable one. Your friendship kept me going. Especial thanks must go to Suhaili, Meifeng, Brendon, and Siang who helped me immensely and saw me through the harder moments.
    [Show full text]
  • Fleas, Faith and Politics: Anatomy of an Indian Epidemic, 1890-1925
    FLEAS, FAITH AND POLITICS: ANATOMY OF AN INDIAN EPIDEMIC, 1890-1925. NATASHA SARKAR (M.A.), Bombay University A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a pleasure to thank those who have made this thesis possible. First, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof.Gregory Clancey for his contribution in time, ideas and support in making this journey productive and stimulating. Through his personal conduct, I have learned so much about what makes for a brilliant teacher. His invaluable suggestions helped develop my understanding of how one should approach research and academic writing. I appreciate his patience in granting me much latitude in working in my own way. It has indeed been an honour to be his PhD student. In fact, I could not have wished for a better PhD team. Prof.John DiMoia‘s enthusiasm and joy for teaching and research has been motivational. I thank him for his prompt and very useful feedback despite his incredibly busy schedule. Prof.Medha Kudaisya, in being compassionate, has been instrumental in easing the many anxieties that plague the mind while undertaking research. I thank her for her unstinting encouragement. Time spent at NUS was made enjoyable, in great measure, to the many friends who became an integral part of my life; providing a fun environment in which to learn and grow. I am grateful for time spent at the tennis courts, table-tennis hall and endless conversation over food and drinks. I would like to especially thank Shreya, Hussain and Bingbing, for their warmth, support and strength.
    [Show full text]
  • The 1918 Flu 100 Years Later Hemagglutinin 1, Neuraminidase 1 April 2018
    Iowa Department of Public Health The 1918 Flu 100 Years Later Hemagglutinin 1, Neuraminidase 1 April 2018 Des Moines Spain Fall 1918- the local Board of The 1918 flu was known as Iowa Health closed all churches, the Spanish Flu because schools and other places of Fall 1918- The Iowa Board of Spanish newspapers were congregation. Residents were Health “quarantined” the one of the first to openly required to wear face masks. entire state, forcing all public report high rates of flu. Many other cities imposed gathering places to close. Spain was a neutral party in similar rules. From 1918-1919 more than WWI; reporting in countries 6,000 people died and more involved in WWI was more than 93,000 were infected. censored. Marajo Island The only place in the world without a single reported case of flu. United States Approximately 675,000 deaths from 1918-1919 Kansas, France, China Virus Identification due to flu. More Origins of the 1918 flu are U.S. soldiers died Professor Hultin traveled to Alaska in unknown. Experts have hy- 1997 to obtain tissue from the frozen from the 1918 flu pothesized that the pandemic than were killed in bodies of 1918 flu victims. With this started in Kansas, France, tissue, the genes of 1918 flu were par- battle during China or other areas. WWI. tially sequenced, indicating it was an H1N1 influenza virus. Full genetic sequencing was done in 2005. Worldwide Over 50,000,000 deaths worldwide from 1918-1919. Unlike typical flu viruses, the 1918 flu preferentially infected and killed healthy young adults; almost half of all deaths were those 20-40 years old.
    [Show full text]
  • The Spanish Flu and the Fiction Literature Fernando Vazquez3,4,5,6
    ISSN: 0214-3429 / ©The Author 2020. Published by Sociedad Española de Quimioterapia. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Review Revista Española de Quimioterapia doi:10.37201/req/049.2020 Emma Vázquez- Espinosa1 Claudio Laganà2 The Spanish flu and the fiction literature Fernando Vazquez3,4,5,6 1Servicio de Neumología, Hospital Universitario La Princesa, Madrid, España 2Servicio de Radiodiagnóstico, Hospital Universitario La Princesa, Madrid, España 3Servicio de Microbiología. Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, Oviedo, España. 4Departamento de Biología Funcional, Área de Microbiología, Facultad de Medicina. Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Es- paña. 5Instituto Oftalmológico Fernández-Vega, Fundación de Investigación Oftalmológica, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, España. 6Grupo de Microbiología Translacional, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Principado de Asturias (ISPA), Oviedo, Spain. Article history Received: 17 May 2020; Revision Requested: 18 June 2020; Revision Received: 18 June 2020; Accepted: 24 June 2020; Published: 7 July 2020 ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION This review focuses on the fictional literature in which the “I had a little bird. Spanish flu is represented either as an anecdotal or as a histor- Its name was Enza. ical aspect and the effect on the author or fictional character. We examine this sociocultural period in the press and mainly I opened up the window, in Anglo-Saxon literary works and from other countries, in- And in flew Enza.” cluding Spanish and Latin American literature that is not very (Old nursery rhyme) represented in some international reviews on the subject. Also, Flu has caused global pandemics over the centuries.
    [Show full text]
  • Pandemic Vs. Seasonal Flu: What's the Difference?
    Pandemic vs. Seasonal Flu: What’s the Difference? easonal flu is a contagious respiratory disease that new virus the body has never encountered. The infected is caused by influenza viruses. It occurs every year, person has no immunity to the new virus and is not S typically in the fall and winter. Seasonal flu can prepared to fight it. cause serious illness and even death, and it poses a risk for people with weak immune systems. However, seasonal Because the new pandemic flu virus would be able to travel flu is usually not severe in most people, because they are easily from person to person, it could spread quickly over already partly protected by having had a similar flu virus long distances to millions of people worldwide. The result before. Annual flu shots also play a key role in protecting would be a flu pandemic. people from seasonal flu. During the 20th century, three serious influenza pandemics Pandemic flu is different and can be much worse. It can — the Spanish Flu in 1918, the Asian Flu in 1957, and cause a worldwide outbreak of a new form of flu virus, the Hong Kong Flu in 1968 — killed millions of people. which spreads easily from person to person because they Because flu pandemics tend to occur in cycles, and because have no immunity. Pandemic flu occurs when a flu virus there has not been a major flu pandemic in many years, goes through changes (called “mutations”) that create a experts believe that we are due for one. Seasonal Flu Pandemic Flu Outbreaks follow predictable seasonal patterns; occurs Occurs rarely annually,
    [Show full text]
  • The Great War and the United States Home Front Exhibit Guide
    The Great War and the United States Home Front Exhibit Guide Pequot Library Special Collections 10/1/2018 CONTENTS Thoughts ............................................................................................................................................................... 2 Discussion Topics .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Vocabulary ............................................................................................................................................................ 6 Suggested Reading ................................................................................................................................................ 8 Internet Resources .............................................................................................................................................. 10 Videos ............................................................................................................................................................. 12 Timeline .............................................................................................................................................................. 13 World War I Casualties ....................................................................................................................................... 18 WWI Background ...............................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Its Lessons for Covid-19
    NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE 1918 INFLUENZA PANDEMIC AND ITS LESSONS FOR COVID-19 Brian Beach Karen Clay Martin H. Saavedra Working Paper 27673 http://www.nber.org/papers/w27673 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 August 2020 We thank Guido Alfani, Doug Almond, Vellore Arthi, David Bloom, Bill Collins, Sergio Correia, James Feigenbaum, Walker Hanlon, Eric Hilt, Carl Kitchens, Noel Johnson, Michael Kuhn, Josh Lewis, Stephan Luck, Analisa Packham, Klaus Prettner, Sarah Quincy, Claire Saavedra, Ellis Tallman, François Velde, and Emil Verner for their helpful comments. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, Oberlin College, and Vanderbilt University. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2020 by Brian Beach, Karen Clay, and Martin H. Saavedra. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and its Lessons for COVID-19 Brian Beach, Karen Clay, and Martin H. Saavedra NBER Working Paper No. 27673 August 2020 JEL No. I10,J10,J24,N0 ABSTRACT This article reviews the global health and economic consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic, with a particular focus on topics that have seen a renewed interest because of COVID-19.
    [Show full text]