The 1918 Flu Pandemic

1940 Words4 Pages

The 1918 Flu Pandemic

Abstract

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.

For long before the 1918 pandemic, doctors had been trying to isolate the microorganism that causes influenza. In 1892, one man, Dr. Friedrich Johann Pfeiffer, believed he had the answer. His discovery, Pfeiffer’s bacillus or Hemophilus influenzae, was widely known as the culprit. However, during the first wave of the 1918 pandemic, doctors lost faith in Pfeiffer’s bacillus. They searched for it in patients, but rarely found it. In the second wave, the bacterium was present in many, but by no means all, cases of Spanish flu. If it was the cause of influenza, it should have been present in all cases (Kolata, Flu 64-65).

Since then, doctors have isolated the virus responsible for the killer flu. Luckily, doctors working during the pandemic had preserved slices of lung from two soldiers, which were stored in a warehouse. The third sample came from a woman in Alaska, whose lungs were preserved from being buried in the permafrost (Kolata, Flu 29-33). Scientists reconstructed the virus by finding its genetic sequence, and they then tested the newly resurrected virus on lab mice and human lung cells. What they discovered was that the 1918 flu was nothing like the more contemporary pandemic strains from the 50s and 60...

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...Cited

Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. Epidemic and Peace, 1918. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976.

Kolata, Gina. “Experts Unlock Clues to Spread of 1918 Virus.” New York Times. 6 Oct. 2005. 23 July. 2008

---. Flu. Canada: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., 1999.

Loo, Yueh-Ming and Michael Gale, Jr. “Influenza: Fatal Immunity and the 1918 Virus.” Nature 445 (2007): 267-268. 23 July. 2008 .

Patterson, S. W. “The Pathology of Influenza in France.” The Medical Journal of Australia 1. (1920) The Medical Front WWI. 23 July. 2008 .

United States. National Archives and Records Administration. The Influenza Epidemic of 1918. 23 July. 2008 < http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/>.

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