Spanish Influenza In 1918

Today the flu we have is not as deadly as it was in 1918. Now we have medicines and vaccines for the flu, but still today about 200 thousand people in America are hospitalized. Still about 30-40 thousand Americans die from the flu every year. The flu in 1918 was called Influenza Pandemic, also known as the Spanish Influenza, but there’s no proof that the virus came from Spain.

Influenza Pandemic has no way of telling where it originated; some people say it was originated in Europe. Spanish Influenza was brought back to the USA and to other countries around the world. It’s likely that soldiers being brought back to America brought the virus with them when they left France.

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic was first discovered, in the U.S,

From ordinary cold-like symptoms came difficulty breathing, coughing, chronic shortness of breath and eventually, vomiting. Which then caused internal bleeding, and the buildup of fluid in the lungs. For a while, you could cough it out,but eventually, your lungs filled with blood and you died. People who were infected were in the prime of their life, 20’s and 30’s, while the not so young people remained largely untouched.

The world was still fighting WWI, so this meant that there was a lack of professional medical staff to handle the virus. Seeing that many doctors had gone over to France to care for wounded soldiers. To keep from spreading the disease, everyone had to wear masks, that covered your face while out in public. A popular health slogan was: “Obey the laws, And wear the gauze, Protect yourself, From septic paws”. This proved useless, seeing as the virus could easily go through the masks.

While people tried to obey this, it did little to stop the spread of the disease. As many as 675,000 people died in the USA; 200,000 in the UK, 400,000 in France and, on the other side of the world, as many as 10,000 people died of the Flu in Australia. In the U.S. funerals were shortened to about fifteen minutes each and mass graves were also dug to bury the