Philadelphia was overcrowded with people. At the time it was also common of its war experiences. People were out looking for jobs. Boy Scouts were on a lookout to find rooms for incoming families. And sometimes even Two, Three, or Four families would crowd in a single or two room apartment with kids. Teens shared beds and laborers did too. During winter of 1917-1918 the death rates had gone up according to the Health Department. They offered social services that were very poor. It was known as the “Blockley” which was an asylum, hospital, and poorhouse. There was Charitable activities ran by the Social Elite. Even schools were short in supplies and there were no high schools until 1934. All this overcrowded population caused an infectious disease. The city government did not take responsibility for this crisis. Neither did Dr. Wilmer Krusen who was the director of the Department of public health. He didn’t have no rush and he always believed that problems disappeared on their own. …show more content…
Nineteen of them were reported ill with symptoms of the influenza. Lieutenant Commander RW Plummer chief health officer for the Philadelphia Naval district. He payed attention to the situation, unlike Krusen. He ordered men out their barracks. Ordered another group of men to disinfect touched to prevent disease from spreading. But the virus had already spread and 334 soldiers were already ill. Plummer brought in Paul Lewis. He was a young scientist who loved the laboratory. He promised to achieve great things. And most important, no one needed to warn him about how bad this disease was because he already knew. So it was up to him to find some kind of serum or develop a vaccine and there was no time for scientific
Boston thought it was ready for any kind of disaster following a mock disaster management operation. Barely a week later, was Boston proved wrong, when a fire outbreak at the Cocoanut Grove claimed the lives of many patrons and maimed others for life. The date was 28 November 1942. The cause was a stray match that put aflame a decorative palm tree in the club. Additionally, the situation was aggravated by the blockage of the few emergency exits in the club. John Esposito explores the events surrounding this incident as well as its aftermath in the book Fire in the Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy and its Aftermath. This paper offers a review of the book, looking critically at the unfolding of the events as well as the author’s thoughts.
Thus he frequented Warm Springs, with its abundance of warm water to help alleviate his pains. A brief respite from this ravaging disease. Salk’s original intention when entering college was to practice law, his mother disagreed and he went to study medicine. Eventually, Jonas Salk was effectively drafted to research influenza, with the United States Army footing the bill and supporting Salk’s research. After this tenure, he accepted a position at the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine to begin a laboratory for virus research.
All the hospitals built around this time prided themselves on being self-sufficient farm communities. At Kings Park, the three wooden houses grew into more than 150 permanent buildings, including a bakery, Laundromat, amusement hall, bandstand, library, furniture repair shops, and nursing school. Most of the people who lived in Kings Park worked at the Psychiatric Center. Many of them were Irish immigrants brought from their native land more than 50 years ago by relatives who worked at the mental hospital on the Long Island Sound and who had promises of jobs for them too. (Bleyer)
The Seattle Hooverville was a home to approximately 1,200 people. The Hooverville was so big, they even elected a “mayor” to settle disputes. Their “mayor,” was Jesse Jackson, he took notes of what happened during the Great Depression. Another big Hooverville was in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Hooverville was a home for about 5,000 people. They were next to the Welcome Inn, the Welcome Inn gave them the food they needed. The Welcome Inn gave food to about 4,000 people a day. The big Hooverville had a “mayor” Gus W. Smith, he was a laborer. The 300 children went to public schools.
...ssor Heather MacDougall, “July – 11 November 1918: Pandemic Influenza on the Battlefield and Homefront,” Lecture delivered 9 November, 2011, HIST 191, University of Waterloo
SAN FRANCISCO--No one can deny the amount of patriotism San Franciscans have for their country especially during the Great War. Rallying, Parading, and marching down the streets of San Francisco are where these civilians choose to be, whether they like wearing gauze masks or not. Such undertakings, however, are exactly the kinds of activities a community seeking to protect itself from Spanish Influenza should definitely avoid. With the commotion of World War I many San Franciscans fail to notice the rapid rate at which people are falling victim to the epidemic influenza. Origins at this time are not specifically known although it was dubbed the name, Spanish Flu, for its early affliction and large mortality rates in Spain.
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.
A pandemic is defined as a disease that has the ability to outbreak and spread globally. A pandemic is determined by how a particular disease spreads rather than how many lives it has claimed. A future pandemic can easily occur if and when a mutation of a new influenza A virus emerges. A pandemic of this type is easily possible to spread quickly and globally due to that when a new strand of the virus emerges, it will be highly unlikely that the human population will have a built up immunity to it.
They needed healthy men, and I am somewhat healthy, so I just had to do it. I had to talk to others to see what is happening in their point of view, and I also had to see their opinion about these things. I figured that I needed to talk to a man named Dr. Waldo. Since he was a doctor, I asked him what was happening, what he saw. The look on his face was unbearable to stand, anyone who looked at him would be terrified at what he was about to say. He told me that it was a terrifying experience, and that 1,800 to 2,500 men were dying in December-June, he also said that there were many diseases such as smallpox ( when Dr. Waldo was experimenting, I was one of them to be experimented on, and now I’m immune to it), dysentery, typhoid, and pneumonia.(Busch, 147) By then, even I was shaking, I knew that it would be hard, but it was a risk that I was willing to
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 occurred during the midst of World War I, and it would claim more lives than the war itself. The disease erupted suddenly without a forewarning and spread rapidly across the globe. It seemed as though all of humanity had fallen under the mercy of this deadly illness. Influenza had very clear symptoms as described by William Collier in his letter to The Lancet. After a patient seizes their temperature can run up to 105° or more while their pulse averages at about 90 beats per minute. The high temperature and low pulse are frequently combined with epistaxis (nosebleed) and cyanosis (blueness of the skin). The epistaxis is caused by the high temperature and the cyanosis is caused by a lack of oxygen due to the decreased pulse (Kent 34). The author of Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, Susan Kinglsey Kent, provides a brief history of the pandemic and documents from the time period. Many of the included documents show how unprepared and unorganized governments attempted to contain and control a disease they had never experienced, and how the expectations of the governments changed as a result of their successes and failures.
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."
Throughout 1918 and 1919, influenza spread quickly in three waves killing an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. With the best-recorded first case having occurred in Fort Riley, the contagious flu spread across military camps around the United States. Due to the world war, the influenza virus was brought over to Europe where it infected people in nearly every country. This disease would end up causing one of the greatest pandemics in human history, but would also catalyze great advancements in science and medicine.
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...
In 1918, things were not going well for the United States in the influenza epidemic. The disease was spreading rapidly and killing many. The United States was also at war, and it was a struggle to keep fighting with the disease on their hands. Germany had also been affected by the disease, and it certainly caused them a great deal of trouble. But the suffering of Germany's army was not enough to alleviate America's difficulty in fighting the war. Influenza was ...
In 1793, Philadelphia was the site of an terrible outbreak of yellow fever. This created a dire situation for the inhabitants. By July, the city's citizens were remarking on the amount of mosquitoes that swarmed around the dock area. Of course, the people of Phiadalea did not correlation of Yellow Fever and the bugs. Just this one epidemic wreaked havoc on this young city. Hardly a family was untouched.