The Influenza and Pneumonia Epidemic of 1918-1919
In the ten months between September 1918 and June 1919, 675,000 Americans died of influenza and pneumonia. When compared to the number of Americans killed in combat in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam combined- 423,000- it becomes apparent that the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 was far more deadly than the war which it accompanied. (Crosby, 206-207) The United States and the rest of the world had been exposed to such epidemics in the past, but never at such a severe cost in human life.
The influenza epidemic came in two waves. The first wave, in the spring of 1918, took far fewer victims than the second. Americans stricken with the flu that spring wondered at the intensity of its symptoms and its incredible contagion. Doctors noticed that the virus seemed to spread more quickly than it ever had before that year, but did not realize how quickly it would reach epidemic proportion. As summer approached, the disease appeared to have satisfied its appetite for new victims.
However, the second, deadlier wave of influenza was just about ready to unleash itself on the world, and it did so quickly. By August 1918, the Surgeon General of the Army reported that the death rate from disease for American soldiers was almost 2/3 lower than the annual rate for civilian males of the same age. At the end of the month, the Spanish influenza virus mutated, and "epidemics of unprecedented virulence" exploded in the same week in three port cities thousands of miles apart: Freetown, Sierra Leone, Brest, Belgium, and Boston, Massachusetts. (Crosby, 37) It is still unknown whether this was the result of three appearances of a single mutation or three different simultaneous mutatio...
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...wed that it had learned from its experience in 1918. Flu epidemics in the thirties and the fifties never approached the magnitude of the 1918-1919 disaster. Research across the world eventually isolated and identified the virus which causes influenza and the microorganisms which so often accompany it and cause deadly complications like pneumonia and strep and staph infections. The American public health system is one of, if not the, best in the world today at educating its citizens and preventing the spread of communicable disease. Historians can only speculate about what would have happened if people had applied the knowledge of today to the devastating epidemic of so many years ago.
WORKS CITED
Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. Epidemic and Peace, 1918. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.
Hoehling, A.A. The Great Epidemic. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961.
...ch. Tiger employed denial in response to media accusations claiming that he and his wife were involved in domestic violence. Bolstering was made apparent when he spoke of his virtues through the charity he and his late father founded and the values Buddhism instilled in him as a child. Differentiation wasn’t quite as emphasized as the other 3 “modes of resolution” (275). Instead of attempting to explain the meaning behind his actions, he took on an apologetic and understanding approach. Tiger’s use of transcendence shifted the issue from his own actions onto a larger plateau regarding the corruption that wealth brings.
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.
In Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, both Joseph Conrad and Francis Ford Coppola create similar statements through their creations as they both centralize their views upon the effects of environmental changes that affect the human condition. The film Apocalypse Now vaguely reflects a similar message pursued by Conrad’s novella, due to the difference in time period, place setting, and circumstances in which the film was created. Conrad wrote his novella during British colonization, focusing upon imperialism. Coppola’s film similarly focused upon the barbaric nature of man, which demonstrates the insanity of the Vietnam War. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad centers his main focus upon the journey of Marlow, a sailor, who travels into the depth of the Congo River as captain to meet Kurtz, an ivory tradesman. Coppola’s film directs a similar connection to the central character, sharing the same journey of a man traveling into the depths of an unknown wilderness. In Apocalypse Now, Willard is assigned to travel the Nung River of Vietnam, locate Kurtz position, and terminate his command. Throughout Apocalypse Now, Coppola also portrays similar themes of imperialism and the corruption of man. In both works, Conrad and Coppola direct this corruption through the character of Kurtz. Upon meeting Kurtz, both central characters share similar actions during the scene, while also differing in the description of Kurtz character. Conrad and Coppola incorporate this scene, to highlight the effects of evil that are reflected through both physical attributes as well as mental. The manifestation of Kurtz’s character reflects similar attributes that display the tragedy of losing his identity as the jungle devours him.
Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’s are two magnum opuses to quest the evil and virtuous human nature. They have some similar and different places among the story plots, characterizations, and environments. At the same time, they reflect the exploration of the human nature in a different era and the exploration is not the end.
At the time, the Influenza of 1918 was called the Spanish Flu. Spain was not involved in the expanding great war (i.e., World War I) and therefore was not censoring it's press. However, Germany, Britain, and America were censoring their newspapers for anything that would lower morale. Therefore, Spain was the first country to publish accounts of the pandemic (Barry 171 and Furman 326), even though the pandemic most likely started in either France or the United States. It was also unique in it's deadliness; it “killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century” (Barry 5). In the United States, the experience during the pandemic varied from location to location. Some areas were better off whereas some were hit horribly by the disease, such as Philadelphia. It also came as a shock to many, though some predicted it's coming; few thought it would strike with the speed and lethality that it did. Though the inherent qualities of the flu enabled its devastation of the country, the response to the flu was in part responsible as well. The response to the pandemic was reasonable, given the dire situation, but not sufficient enough to prevent unnecessary death and hardship, especially in Philadelphia.
Hypothermia protocol for the post cardiac arrest patient has been an evidence based practice of this therapy for about a decade now. This intervention, often used in the critical care setting, is now expanding to primary emergency responders as well. This paper will present some of the notable research that has been done on therapeutic hypothermia, and current use of this intervention.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy. New York: Longman, 1999. 469-481.
Nancy K. Bristow, American Pandemic, The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 193
“The Influenza Pandemic of 1918.” Billings, Molly. Stanford University Virology. June 1, 1997. retrieved from http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
The epidemic began at around the end of the first World War and was the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. Some symptoms of the influenza included muscle pains, sore throat, headache, fever, glandular disturbances, eye aberrations, heart action slowing, and depression of all bodily functions and reactions. The flu is highly contagious and spreads around easily whenever an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks. This global disaster was nicknamed the “Spanish Flu,” or “La Grippe.” The nickname of the Spanish Flu came from one of the earliest countries to be hit hard by influenza; eight million people in Spain were killed in the May of 1918. There were also other nicknames for the epidemic. The French called it “purulent bronchitis,” the Italians named it “sandfly fever,” and the Germans labeled it “Blitz Katarrh.” The Influenza Epidemic of 1918, a virus that spread throughout the globe, affected the world in many ways and had many devastating after effects.
In 1918 to 1919 a flu pandemic broke out known as the Spanish flu. A majority of the people who caught this illness passed on quickly. Others passed on from complications caused by bacteria. An estimated twenty to forty percent of the world’s population contracted the illness.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between twenty and forty million people. (1) Influenza is a virus that appeared in 1918 and caused a pandemic. It made an enormous impact that is still significant to the world today. It has pushed scientists to make advancements in the medicine and vaccination industry that continue to grow each and every day. Influenza may be a horrible thing, but without it we wouldn’t be where we are today.
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.