The 1918 Influenza

The 1918 Influenza is an almost forgotten pandemic. Many would think that the enormous violence of it, and the number of deaths that were the outcome, would have made more of an impression on the world than it has. History books rarely say more than a paragraph about it, and what is written about it does not even hint at the ferocity of it. In the 2001 World Encyclopedia, there is only a paragraph of information, and the information is not even close to stating the information adequately.

In the Spring of 1918, around mid February, a mild influenza started at a military camp in Kansas. The troops dubbed it, “Three day fever” because it usually lasted about three days, and only on rare occasions did people die. Nevertheless, in only four months, the mild strain had swept the globe, killing tens of thousands. In Boston, it infected 81 people in the space of four days. In London, 1,175 died in three weeks. But this was only the first wave of the influenza, and the milder of the two. No one was prepared when, only a month after the world had recovered from the mild influenza, it sprang up again, in a military camp at Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

On August 22nd, the first person who had the second strain of the influenza was diagnosed as having cerebrospinal meningitis. Because the doctors did not believe that a flu would have such extreme symptoms. The soldier came in with a fever, headache, burning eyes, chills, and a sore body. Soon, signs of delirium started. His face turned a brownish-purple color, he started coughing up blood, and his feet turned black. He was dead only days after showing symptoms. The next day, eight more soldiers walked into the hospital with the same symptoms. The day after that, 58 more. The fourth day, 81 more were sick. The next week, 118. Then they started dying, two hours to five days after being infected. An average of 100 soldiers died per day. Out of the 300 nurses caring for the men, 90 died. The doctors there begged the government to send scientists to diagnose the illness and try to find a cure before it spread out of the camp.

The government sent William H. Welch, a well known and revered medical scientist in America. It was said of him, “(He can) ...transform men’s lives almost with the flick of a wrist.” He was looked up to, and was considered one of the most important medical professors of the age. When he did an autopsy on one of the victims of the influenza, he actually trembled with fear at what he saw. The lungs were filled with blood and fluids. The victims were dying because they were drowning in their own blood. The doctors who were assisting him were shocked at his response when he said, “This must be some new kind of infection... Or plague.”

So the influenza started, plaguing the young and healthy with an 80% death rate. The mild strain that had swept the globe in February had mutated into a deadly flu. The doctors were very hesitant to call the sickness a flu. Some called it Bronchopneumonia. Others called it things like an Epidemic Respiratory Infection, or an unidentified pandemic disease. Doctors raced to find a vaccine, but nothing was effective. Throughout the states, the influenza attacked the humans lung cells, and black feet indicated the death that would inevitably occur.

Massachusetts was the first state to suffer huge numbers of deaths, but it quickly spread. The Great Lakes Training Station, in Chicago, Illinois, was struck hard. 2,600 men were squeezed into barracks for 1,800. In a military camp in Ohio that held 13,161 men, 1,101 died. Some cities had multiple waves of the strain. Louisville, Kentucky suffered three waves in rapid succession. San Francisco was told to start digging graves in preparation for the influenza. In many cities, they made it a requirement to wear a surgical mask at all times. In San Francisco alone, they distributed 5,000 masks in one hour. Fines for leaving the home without a mask were a minimum of $5, to 30 days in jail. Seattle and New York were two other cities that required the masks. In most cities any public gatherings were banned, but some churches continued to meet outside. If you were sick while traveling by ship, you were told to sleep on deck, with no one to nurse you, to lessen the chance that others would get ill. Sheets were hung in military barracks to keep soldiers from breathing on one another. The influenza was nicknamed, “Purple Death.”

Philadelphia was the hardest hit American city. The doctors there claimed that the influenza wouldn’t survive because of the climate, so they didn’t even try to take any precautions. When it struck, 4,500 died in two weeks. In one day, 759 died. Morgues were so crowded with bodies that embalmers refused to go into them. Funerals were limited to 15 minutes long. There were ten times more bodies than caskets to put them in. Signs were posted, begging people not to spit or close their windows. Priests drove carts down the streets, calling out, asking people to bring out their dead. There was such a need for doctors that they asked for volunteer doctors, and didn’t require someone with a medical degree. 72,000 volunteered. Non Certified doctors and nurses were frantically assigned to hospitals in need. The number of dead bodies was so great, mass graves were dug, and bodies thrown in without coffins. Grave-diggers were accused of dealing ghoulishly with the bodies, but there simply wasn’t enough time to do anything differently. One doctor said, “The life of the city had almost stopped.”

Between September 11th, and October 3rd, there were an estimated 75,000 cases of the influenza in America. September through November, the American Expeditionary Force listed 9,144 deaths. In September alone, 12,000 American’s died. In all, 38% of the American Army and Navy were killed. More American soldiers, not including civilians, died than those in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, World War I, and World War II, put together. Rumors were spread that the influenza was an act of war: That the German drug company, Bayer, was mixing the virus with the aspirin they were sending to the states; Or maybe the German military released an airborne virus in Boston Harbor and other major American cities.

But the US was not the only place to suffer. Within two months, the entire globe was infected, excluding Australia, and islands under Australia’s jurisdiction. Australia, when hearing about the virus, cut off all contact of the outside world.

They got the better end of the deal. The French army suffered at least 10,158 deaths in three months. The French called the influenza, “La Grippe.” In two months, the British Expeditionary Force suffered at least 3,656 deaths. In Wales, two thirds of the population died. In Germany, people were literally dropping dead in the streets. The Germans called it, “Blitzkatarrh,” which means, “Lightning.” An Eskimo village of 80 people was hit, and when the influenza had passed, only five adults and a number of children had survived.

But those numbers pale in comparison of the overall affect of the influenza. It killed more in a year than the Black Death had killed in 100 years. More people died in 24 days than those that die from AIDS in 24 years. It killed more in it’s duration than any other disease in history. The number of deaths was at least 50 million, but is more likely over 100 million. There is no way to find the actual amount of deaths, because it swept the globe so fast and thoroughly that accounts of it are vague, and in many places, nonexistent. In 1917, the average life expectancy was 51 years. In 1918, it dropped 12 years.

Doctors and scientists were so very frightened by the event, they immediately started looking for a vaccine, in the case that the virus might appear again. Richard Shope proved that the influenza was caused by a virus, and later, Wilson Smith discovered the virus that caused it. But this was no help.

The common flu mutates, at least once, annually. That is why new vaccines for it come out every year. But the flu mutates so fast that the vaccine quickly becomes useless. Since the 1918 Influenza was the common flu, mutated, Richard Shope’s discovery of the virus was useless. The exact same flu pattern happening again is slim, so why create a vaccine for a specific virus that will most likely never strike again? But the possibility of another bad mutation is pretty good. In fact, bad mutations of the influenza have already happened twice, but were stopped before they could spread too far. Statistics show that if the wrong mutation occurred again, it would result in 1.5 million deaths in America alone. That is roughly the number of citizens of Nebraska! The deaths would numerate over the number of deaths from heart disease, cancers, strokes, Chronic Pulmonary Disease, AIDS, and Alzheimer in one year.

So why is the 1918 Influenza so avoided when it had, and can have, such disastrous results? Alfred Crosby believes that the people who survived it are too terrified of it to speak about it. Another reason might be that it killed no big political leaders. It also left nothing behind. No cripples, no lasting disorders to those that managed to survive, and so on.

It is America’s forgotten pandemic; A killer that ravaged the globe, killing millions. Then it disappeared, leaving the world to recuperate. It is the common flu. Something that the world is so used to, they don’t even see it as a threat. The world is almost unaware that it has ever wreaked such destruction. The only question is, will the world be ready if it happens again?