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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks neverdem. |
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Posted on 10/08/2012 12:00:43 PM PDT by neverdem
For years historians, epidemiologists, and virologists have been attempting to peel back the cobwebs of time in order to analyze the deadliest pandemic in human history; the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic.
John Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History, has probably done more to reawaken memories of that awful time than any other source, but many gaps in our knowledge remain.
Jeffrey K. Taubenberger and David Morens - both researchers at NIAID – have added considerably to our understanding of the H1N1 virus and the events surrounding its emergence. Taubenberger was the first to sequence the the genome of the 1918 Spanish Flu virus while David Morens is a prominent medical historian.
See Morens & Taubenberger on Influenza’s History for a fascinating look back at influenza through the ages. Highly recommended.
Spanish Flu broke out in the spring and summer of 1918, while WWI was still underway. It so devastated troops on both sides of the conflict that historians believed it helped to hasten the end of the war.
Soldiers and sailors – living in cramped and often unhygienic quarters – bore the early brunt of the pandemic, while troop trains and ships helped to spread it around the globe.
While there are many horrific accounts from the pandemic – including some small villages in Alaska entirely wiped out – some of the best documented events occurred onboard troop ships.
One of the most famous was the HMNZ Troop Carrier Tahiti, which during August-September of 1918 carried 1217 troops and crew (almost double what the ship was rated to carry) from New Zealand to Plymouth, England with provisioning stops at Cape Town and Sierra Leone...
(Excerpt) Read more at afludiary.blogspot.com ...
These were pre- Spanish Flu, most of the dates were in the early to mid 1800's. I'd guess smallpox or cholera, but that's just a guess.
Greatest plague in history?
Worse than the Black Death (Bubonic plague epidemic)?
Perhaps in absolute numbers of victims, but probably not in the proportion of the population killed.
I have an uncle who was doing our family genealogy and we went to a cemetery to find a grave for a relative who died at the time of the Spanish flu. They couldn’t give us an exact location, just a general spot in the cemetery. Turns out, in that area, there were no markers, because they were mass graves for the influenza victims.
The lethality was pretty high, but not as deadly as some other diseases in terms of most locations. I think what made it so bad was it was probably first pathogen that could spread worldwide so quickly due to air travel, automobiles, faster ships, etc. By the time one population had started developing any resistance, it had already spread to ten more areas.
Remembering Great Aunt Martha Pfautz Mohn, died age 21,1918
mark
Don’t know if the Thieves story from the bubonic plague days is for real but I use a version of The Four Thieves oil
I have a letter from a relative who was dying of cholera during the Civil War. She wrote about other family members who had succumbed. Very sad.
My father was born in 15. He had 9 siblings. My mother was born in 17. She had 8 siblings. Each family lost 1 or 2 kids in childhood. I wonder if that flu took any of them.
Perhaps, although as I recall, the hardest hit demographic were young adults with strong immune systems. I just checked the wiki article about it: “Modern analysis has shown the virus to be particularly deadly because it triggers a cytokine storm, which ravages the stronger immune system of young adults.”
(Thanks, neverdem!)
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks neverdem. |
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In the 1970s, I talked with some who had been children in the time of the Spanish flu, and they all had pretty deep mental blocks about it. After the flu, it was a forbidden topic of conversation, as everyone had suffered, and the dead often became non-persons, remembered only in family Bibles.
One man had a particularly bad memory. His family’s house was on the route to the cemetery. Being kept inside for much of six months, from his second story window, he watched the coffins go by. Particularly troubling was the small coffins of children, making him wonder which of his peers had died.
Importantly, because epidemics were very common, doctors carried quarantine signs in their bags. Families of means had a special small room as a “sick room”, so sick family members could be isolated. Such a room generally had an outside door, so things could be taken in our out without flooding the house with bad air.
Only recently it has been established that open windows are superior to even filtered a/c, because they cycle out the bad air faster, reducing airborne contamination inside.
Physicians of the time used phenols and carbolic soap as effective antibiotics.
Importantly, at the time of the Spanish flu, viruses were known to exist, but only as infectious organisms too small to be seen by a microscope. Bacteriophage viruses, viruses that attack bacteria, were also known to exist. Filters too small for bacteria had been developed, as well as a means to calculate viral concentration.
One of the worst problems of the time was the extensive public ignorance of good hygiene. This remained the case until the government began an permanent program to educate the public during WWII. During the Spanish flu, the public were desperate for even rumors of what might help.
Thanks for the ping!
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
Last year, I was helping a friend’s folks move into a new house. We found a stack of old postcards from 1918. In the cards, there were a large number of death notices from the flu.
One of the great uncles had both of his girlfriends die from it. He never married. Many lost at least one family member.
Last year, I was helping a friend’s folks move into a new house. We found a stack of old postcards from 1918. In the cards, there were a large number of death notices from the flu.
One of the great uncles had both of his girlfriends die from it. He never married. Many lost at least one family member.
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