In the spring of 1918, the first wave of one of the deadliest influenza pandemics began plaguing its victims (Peters, ix). Over the span of three lethal waves, the pandemic claimed approximately forty million victims, eradicating nearly twenty percent of the entire world’s population, or about one out of five individuals (Peters, ix). To make matters more dire, the ill-suited medical community was exceptionally unprepared for such a wide-scale pandemic: Doctors had very basic tools, knew little about diseases, and had no experience with vaccinations or prevention (Peters, 1-5; “The 1920s: Medicine and Health: Overview”, n.p.). People blindly faced the epidemic, relying on folk remedies such as consuming wine, drinking antiseptic, and adapting nudist lifestyles to face the sickness that could kill within hours (Peters, 47; “Medicine ads of the 1910s”, n.p.). Therefore, the accountability of the 1918 Great Pandemic was placed heavily on the medical community’s shoulders (Peters, 43). After the Great Pandemic, the public and the medical community realized the fact that changes needed to happen in order to prevent such a catastrophic pandemic in the future (Peters, 44). Despite the obstacles the pandemic caused and the fact that it left the medical community debilitated, the medical community miraculously started flourishing by inventing new technologies, diagnostic processes, remedies, and preventative methods in the 1920s (Scott, n.p.; “The 1920s: Medicine and Health: Overview”, n.p.). The 1920s marked the turning point of modern-day medicine as it transformed art into a science that renovated and saved society.
The 1918 Great Influenza Pandemic came as a painful slap in the face to the medical community; a slap that tol...
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...rse: Birth Control Advertising in the 1920s and 1930s.” 1 Jan. 1994. ProQuest. Web. 1 Feb. 2012.
Scott, Robert. "1920's Medicine." The Roaring Twenties. 2005. N.p. Web. 16 Jan. 2012. .
Peters, Stephanie True. Epidemic! The 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Tarrytown: Benchmark Books, 2005. Print.
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Kent, Susan Kingsley. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.
From the Chelsea Naval Hospital, overlooking the Boston Bay, I sip on a cup of Joe and browse over the Sports Section of the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this month, three Bostonians dropped dead from influenza. In examining the extent of the epidemic, Surgeon-General Blue commented to the Times , "People are stricken on the streets, while at work in factories, shipyards, offices or elsewhere. First there is a chill, then fever with temperature from 101 to 103, headache, backache, reddening and running of the eyes, pains and aches all over the body, and general prostration." I gaze out my window, the sun seems brighter than usual and the town more radiant. It must be the victory, for the threat of death due to influenza is pervasive. Outside, children jump rope. With every skip of the jump rope they chant. "I had a little bird." Skip. "Its name was Enza." Skip. "I opened up the window." Skip. "And in-flu-enza."
After reading The Panic Virus, it became evident that this book can in fact be extremely useful. Perhaps people prefer not to educate themselves about vaccination on the grounds that medical language can be dry, confusing, and uninteresting. Perhaps they don’t wish to listen to medical professionals due to the fact that they feel that they have an agenda to protect themselves. Whatever the reason, the need for Mnookin’s The Panic Virus is to provide a strong argument for pro-vaccination that is given by a member of the reader’s peers. Mnookin is not a medical professional, and has no personal gain from defending the medical field; therefore, his argument is ‘by the people, for the people’. Mnookin’s tone throughout the novel also makes The Panic Virus a page-turner. Mnookin uses a tone that is at times formal and factual and at other times snide and informal, engaging the reader with every
The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic stretched its lethal tentacles all over the globe, even to the most remote areas of the planet, killing fifty million people or possibly even more. Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century, and it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years.3 Influenza normally kills the elderly and infants, but this deadly and abnormal strand claimed young people, those in their twenties or thirties as its target victims. Such was the case for Jules Bergeret. Jules was a “big, strapping man” who owned a tavern during the epidemic, and on December 11 he celebrated his 32 birthday. Within two weeks Jules, his mother, his sister, and his 25 year old wife all fell victim to the flu, and on December 22 he was dead.4 The virus left victims bleeding out of their nose ears and mouth; some coughing so hard that autopsies would later show that abdominal muscles and rib cartilage had been torn. Victims ...
“The Site of Origin of The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Its Public Health Implications.” Barry, John. US national Library of Health Medicine, January 20, 2004. Retrieved from:
The influenza pandemic of 1918 had not only altered the lives of thousands, but the habitual lives of family and work as well. The Spanish Influenza collected more lives than all of the casualties of war in the twentieth century combined. After the disease had swept through the nation, towns that once began their days in lazy, comfortable manners had begun to struggle to get through a single day. What started as a mild neglect of a typical fever or case of chills had escalated and grown at an alarmingly rapid rate to be fearsome and tragic.
The Spanish Influenza was a contributing factor to the many deaths that occurred during this time. In 1918-1919, a form of influenza killed between 20 and 40 million p...
In the fall of 1918 influenza appeared for the first time in pockets across the globe. At first it was pushed aside as a case of the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. (1) Including twenty-eight percent of all Americans. In those two years an estimated six hundred and seventy-five thousand Americans died because of influenza. This was the greatest scare Americans had ever seen from a single disease. People between the age of twenty and forty were at the greatest risk of infection. Even President Woodrow Wilson suffered from the flu in early 1919 while negotiating the crucial treaty of Versailles to end the World War. The public health departments distributed gauze masks to be worn in public. Stores could not hold sales; funerals were limited to 15 minutes. Some towns required a signed certificate to enter and railroads would not accept passengers without them. (1) Influenza had killed nearly as many American servicemen as died in battle, ten times and over that number of American civilians, and twice as many people in the world as died in combat on all fronts in the entire four...
Influenza Encyclopedia. (n.d.). The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918: A Digital Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 27, 2013, from http://www.influenzaarchive.org/
At no time was a search for the cure for influenza more frantic than after the devastating effects of the pandemic of 1918. The pandemic killed somewhere between twenty and a hundred million people, making it twenty five times more deadly than the ordinary cough and sneeze flu. The symptoms of this flu were like something straight out of a horror movie: the victim’s facial complexion changed to a dark, brownish purple, the feet turned black, and they began to cough up blood. Eventually, death was caused, literally by drowning, when the victim’s lungs filled with their own blood. The first scientist to claim to solve the enigma of influenza was Dr. Friedrich Johann Pfeiffer. He isolated a bacterium he named Hemophilus influenzae from the respiratory tract of those who had the flu in the pandemic of 1890. He was believed to be correct in his discovery until the pandemic of 1918, when scientists searched the respiratory tracts of influenza victims and only sometimes found his bacterium. Robert E. Shope and his mentor Paul Lewis were the next to attempt to crack the code of influenza. They chose to study the disease in pigs, a controversial choice because many people believed that the swine influenza pigs were contracting was not the same as the human flu. The first experiment they ran was ba...
One of the most virulent strains of influenza in history ravaged the world and decimated the populations around the world. Present during World War I, the 1918 strain of pandemic influenza found many opportunities to spread through the war. At the time, science wasn’t advanced enough to study the virus, much less find a cure; medical personnel were helpless when it came to fighting the disease, and so the flu went on to infect millions and kill at a rate 25 times higher than the standard.
The influenza or flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919, the deadliest in modern history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide–about one-third of the planet’s population at the time–and estimates place the number of victims anywhere from 25 to 100 million. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became sick, and some 675,000 Americans died during the pandemic. The 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the U.S. and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world. Surprisingly, many flu victims were young, otherwise healthy adults. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain or prevent its spread. In the U.S., citizens were ordered to wear masks, and schools, theaters and other public
A brief review of the historical year of 1918 when people were informed to take precaution against influenza, while their children came up with a catchy tune for the "worst epidemic the United States has ever known"1 and comparing it with the influenza of today.
...ssor Heather MacDougall, “July – 11 November 1918: Pandemic Influenza on the Battlefield and Homefront,” Lecture delivered 9 November, 2011, HIST 191, University of Waterloo
When looking back on history, it is evident to see that humans by nature are warriors. Humans often find themselves fighting mysterious battles against disguised enemies. Throughout history the earth has been afflicted with mysterious diseases, which tend to invisibly cause the preponderance of civilizations to perish. The evolution of infectious diseases has and always will provide challenges for humankind (Hoff, Smith, and Calisher 6-7). Over the course of time, humans gradually developed a preference to live in large urban settings. Urbanization and the cross-cultural interaction of civilizations have both strongly provoked widespread illness, which is known as an epidemic or pandemic based upon size. An epidemic is when a common disease affects a large number of people within a particular region (Lamb). A pandemic is similar to an epidemic but is even more widespread than an epidemic, and spreads throughout entire continents or even the world. Despite the slight variation in meaning, most pandemics are interchangeably denoted as epidemics (Friendlander 13-14). Epidemics and pandemics have formed the course of human history by inflicting lifestyle alterations and abruptly killing large masses of people. When one thinks of widespread disease it is easy to think that pandemics and epidemics are things of the past. Unfortunately, epidemics are commonly found today in poorer countries and major pandemics are still on the rise, such as the modern disease AIDS (Lampton 12-15). Nonetheless, epidemics and pandemics affect large portions of the world’s population; thus, these ongoing diseases will always influence the history of mankind because they force transformation amongst even the strongest civilizations.