Posted on 01/28/2018 9:29:30 AM PST by beaversmom
Blue lips. Blackened skin. Blood leaking from noses and mouths. Coughing fits so intense they ripped muscles. Crippling headaches and body pains that felt like torture. These were the symptoms of a disease that was first recorded in Haskell County, Kansas, one hundred years ago this week, in January 1918. From Kansas the illness spread quickly: not only throughout the U.S. but across the world. Eventually (if misleadingly) it became known as Spanish flu. And while its effects on the body were awful, the mortality rate was truly terrifying.
During a pandemic that lasted two years from its outbreak in the U.S., between 50 million and 100 million people across the globe died—around three percent of the world’s population. Spanish flu killed more people than any pandemic disease before or since, including the sixth-century Plague of Justinian, the medieval Black Death, the AIDS epidemic or Ebola.
The First World War, which was ending just as the flu took hold, killed barely a third as many people with bullets and bombs as the H1N1 strain of influenza did with coughs and shivers.
History Recolored features the work of colorist Marina Amaral, bringing to life black and white photos with color she applies digitally.
Blue lips. Blackened skin. Blood leaking from noses and mouths. Coughing fits so intense they ripped muscles. Crippling headaches and body pains that felt like torture. These were the symptoms of a disease that was first recorded in Haskell County, Kansas, one hundred years ago this week, in January 1918. From Kansas the illness spread quickly: not only throughout the U.S. but across the world. Eventually (if misleadingly) it became known as Spanish flu. And while its effects on the body were awful, the mortality rate was truly terrifying.
During a pandemic that lasted two years from its outbreak in the U.S., between 50 million and 100 million people across the globe died—around three percent of the world’s population. Spanish flu killed more people than any pandemic disease before or since, including the sixth-century Plague of Justinian, the medieval Black Death, the AIDS epidemic or Ebola.
The First World War, which was ending just as the flu took hold, killed barely a third as many people with bullets and bombs as the H1N1 strain of influenza did with coughs and shivers.
The Photograph
This photograph, from the archives of Oakland Public Library in California, shows nurses of the American Red Cross preparing surgical dressings for use on flu patients during the winter of 1918-19. Colorizing the photograph reveals that they are wearing a variety of uniforms. The dark-veiled women standing to the top-right of the frame are wearing the blue headdresses that had been brought in for use by the Red Cross Supply Corps in regulations issued in 1917. Others, however, are still wearing uniforms dating to before these new rules were issued. Color paint-portraits of Red Cross nurses tell us that veils had previously been white. During the emergency conditions of the pandemic, presumably there were better things to worry about.
The virus had first appeared in Oakland in early October, and within a fortnight of its arrival thousands of people were sick. The city hospital was quickly overwhelmed, so the mayor ordered the recently opened civic auditorium (now the Kaiser Convention Center) to be converted into an overflow ward with 80 beds. All were quickly filled by seriously ill Oaklanders.
The image here was one of several taken during a visit to the auditorium by the renowned local newspaper photographer Edward A. ‘Doc’ Rogers. Doc was no stranger to calamity, having covered major Bay Area disasters including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The nurses he photographed were volunteers working for the American Red Cross. The gauze across their mouths was a precious commodity, since literally every person in the city required it: citizens had been compelled by law to wear a face-mask in public, under pain of an $100 fine and 10 days in prison.
The aftermath
In Oakland, swift action by the city authorities to shut schools and churches and enforce public hygiene measures meant that the local flu epidemic was under control by February 1919. Nevertheless, 1,300 citizens had died, out of 675,000 American deaths in total: more than were killed during the entire Civil War. The pandemic, combined with mortality during the First World War, caused United States life expectancy to drop by 12 years.
Today flu can still be lethal – this season’s flu strain has been unusually deadly–but a tragedy on the scale of 1918 has, mercifully, not been repeated.
Thanks for catching my error.
It was last century! 1918!
My Dad’s 28 year old brother and same age SIL were never sick with the exception on an occasional cold.
My maternal grandfather died of the Spanish influenza November 6, 1918.
My wife’s late father said his grandmother told him about entire family’s being wiped out in a few days time in the hollers of eastern Kentucky. They were fine one day and three days later small to large families all dead. Said it roared through the hollers like wild fire.
Are you saying it happened last year?)
I often write the wrong date well into February...
My paternal great grandmother became sick with the flu on October 4th and passed on October 9, 1918. The newspaper article said that local medical help was summoned but unable to overcome the illness.
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/influenza_pandemic
The above is a link to a long and interesting article about the war and the flu. I’ve read other accounts that the war was “called” on account of the flu - but that is probably too simple.
The above article describes how it affected the different nations at different, critical times. Below is an excerpt from the end of the article, quoting a German Prince:
“On 3 August Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria (1869-1955) wearily noted, “Poor provisions, heavy losses and the deepening influenza have deeply depressed the spirits of the men in the III Infantry Division.”[43] It is a mark of how significant Ludendorff subsequently judged the loss of his men to the “Spanish” influenza to have been in impairing his offensives that, when, late in September, the writing was on the wall for Germany and he himself on the point of a nervous breakdown, he told the army’s Surgeon-General that the recent fresh outbreak of the pandemic in the French army might yet offer Germany a “last chance” against outright defeat, just as in 1762 the sudden “miraculous” death of Elizabeth, Empress of Russia (1709-1762) had saved Prussia from defeat in the Seven Years’ War.[44]
And we still have radio commercials about it
My father was born in Newark, NJ in 1920. With records I found through genealogy research I was able to prove to him that he had a sister who was born and died before my father was born. He never knew about this sister and we speculated that she had died during this epidemic.
Several years ago I read an article that implied that a fight between American and German troops in a tunnel is what introduced the influenza into the German army.
Note: this topic is from . Thanks beaversmom. It's almost as if uncontrolled immigration (a.k.a. human tsunami) has a down side.
Are you referring to a current flu in the fall of 2019? The article refers to a bad flu that year, but the article is from January 2018.
Comment 6 was removed, so we have no idea what your comments refers to.
Comment 23 has also been removed.
Yes - the fit young people died at a higher rate. Called a Cytokine storm. I am one of those that believes WW I was “called” on the account of the flu. And then picked up again as WW II due to all of the unfinished business. I’m no expert though.
Our Grandfather’s first wife and two children, IIRC, died during this pandemic. Near Love Field, Dallas.
One of the best books I’ve read.
In the Kolata book is the interesting tidbit, well, two really, that the previous years (1916, 1917) and two following years (1919, 1920) also had very devasting outbreaks of flu; and that the last really bad flu outbreak of the 19th c was apparently similar genetically to the Spanish Lady, because those old enough to have had that bad outbreak in teh 1890s had immunity to the SL.
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