The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919
First Edition ©2013
The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 appeared suddenly at the end of the First World War and with explosive impact took the lives of at least 30 million people worldwide. Spreading rapidly across the globe, it defied all previous understandings of the disease, striking the youngest and healthiest indiv...
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The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 appeared suddenly at the end of the First World War and with explosive impact took the lives of at least 30 million people worldwide. Spreading rapidly across the globe, it defied all previous understandings of the disease, striking the youngest and healthiest individuals most acutely and confounding the doctors and governments who struggled to contain it. In this volume, Susan Kingsley Kent presents an overview of the disease, detailing its symptoms, tracking its spread, and offering insights into the medical communitys understanding of and reaction to the pandemic. Documents from period newspapers, medical journals, and government publications, as well as letters, journal entries, memoirs, and novels written by survivors and medical staff, provide a variety of perspectives from six continents and illuminate the impact of the pandemic — from the lives of children orphaned by the flu to colonial rebellions for which the pandemic served as a major catalyst. Document headnotes, maps and illustrations, a chronology, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index enrich students understanding.
"This interesting collection takes a global perspective involving history, biology, public health, colonial issues, and the sociology of race and class and will allow students to write on the flu from multiple perspectives. I recommend the book without hesitation to anyone teaching a class on World War I, especially those who take a global approach." — Nancy Fitch, California State University, Fullerton "This book — especially the documents — humanizes history in a way that students will find particularly appealing."— George Vascik, Miami University, Ohio
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
List of Maps and Illustrations
PART ONE. Introduction: "There Was No Stopping It."
A Familiar, Yet Unprecedented Illness
A Deadly Force Goes Global
Treatment Responses: "There Was Just Nothing You Could Do."
Short- and Long-Term Consequences of the Pandemic
Legacy and Lessons of the Pandemic
PART TWO. The Documents
1. The Nature and Experience of the Disease
1. Letter from a Volunteer Nurse, October 17, 1918
2. E.T. Hsieh, The Recent Epidemic of Influenza in Peking, 1918
3. William Collier, A New Type of Influenza, October 23, 1918
4. K. Iwagawa, On Epidemic Influenza among Japanese Children, April 17, 1920
5. Great Britain Registrar-General, Age Distribution of Deaths Due to Influenza in Ireland, 1919
6. E. Oliver Ashe, Some Random Recollections of the Influenza Epidemic in Kimberly, South Africa, January 11, 1919
7. Mary E. Westphal, On Visiting Nurse Services in Chicago, November 8, 1918
8. Anne L. Colon, Influenza at Cedar Branch Camp, Michigan, 1919
9. Ijiro Gomibuchi, Personal Account of the World Influenza Epidemic, May 1919
10. Josie Mabel Brown, Recollections of a US Navy Nurse, 1986
11. Sierra Leone Weekly News, Coffins, October 26, 1918
12. Sir Thomas Horder, The Post-Febrile Period, December 28, 1918
13. A. Hay-Michel, Nervous Symptoms in Two Patients, January 25, 1919
2. Transmission and Mortality
14. Santa Fe Monitor (Kansas), Early Reports of Influenza in the United States, January–February, 1918
15. Daily Express (London), Mystery Malady Spreading in the Large Towns of Sweden, May 30, 1918
16. Daily Express (London), The Mystery War Disease: Its Appearance in Belfast, June 13, 1918
17. Daily Express (London), The New War Disease in Germany: Mystery Epidemic Now Ravaging Berlin, Doctors Powerless, June 17, 1918
18. United States Public Health Reports, Influenza a Probable Cause of Fever of Undetermined Nature in Southern States, June 21, 1918
19. The Times (London), Influenza Spreading in Germany, July 4, 1918
20. Lagos Standard, Influenza in Lagos, Nigeria, October 2, 1918
21. J. A. Oduenade, Spreading Influenza to the Nigerian Countryside, October 28, 1918
22. M. Cameron Blair and J. Beringer, Report on the Influenza Outbreak, Nigeria, September 5, 1919
23. The Times (London), Cape Town in the Grip of Influenza, October 10, 1918
24. C. E. L. Burman, A Review of the Influenza Epidemic in Rural South Africa, January 11, 1919
25. British Medical Journal, Influenza in India, April 15, 1919
26. William W. Cadbury, M.D., The 1918 Pandemic of Influenza in Canton, January 1920
27. Gresham Life Assurance Society, Influenza Claims Exceed War Claims, July 1, 1919
3. Treatment Responses
28. Victoria (Australia) Board of Public Health, "Spanish" Influenza, November 23, 1918
29. Journal of the American Medical Association, Failure to Quarantine in Buenos Aires, October 26, 1918
30. E. Henry Cummings, An Appeal by the Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, September 7, 1918
31. E. Evelyn, A Defense of the Colonial Government’s Response to the Flu in Sierra Leone, September 28, 1918
32. Oakland, California Health Department, Influenza! How to Avoid It! How to Care for Those Who Have It!, 1918
33. United States Public Health Service, Warning Notice about Influenza, 1918
34. North Carolina Board of Public Health, The Way the Germans Did It at Chateau-Therry; The Way North Carolinians Do It at Home, October, 1919
35. Government of New South Wales, Proclamation, February 3, 1919.
36. Daily Express (London), Quinine and Cinnamon to the Rescue, June 22, 1918
37. Z. Dionysius Leomy, Letter to the Editor of the Sierra Leone Weekly News, September 14, 1918
38. "Why Catch Their Influenza?", 1919
39. The Daily Herald, On Behalf of the Invalids, December 21, 1918
40. The British Medical Journal, Influenza and the Shortage of Doctors, November 2, 1918.
41. Mateo Arriola Moreno, Influenza in Paraguay, 1918
42. South African Medical Journal, Notes on the Influenza Epidemic, December 14, 1918
43. The Indian Medical Gazette, A Criticism of Indian Physicians, February 1919
44. China Medical Journal, A Criticism of Chinese Treatment of Influenza, January 1919
45. Beulah Gribble, Influenza in a Kentucky Coal-Mining Camp, 1919
46. M. K. B., A Two Weeks Assignment, 1919
47. United States Navy, Awards and Commendations to Medical Staff, 1918-1919
4. Consequences and Repercussions of the Pandemic
48. New York Times, 2000 Children Need Care: Measures Taken to Aid Children of Influenza Victims, November 9, 1918
49. Mary McCarthy, Orphaned by the Flu, 1946
50. Erich von Ludendorff, The Offensive in the West, 1919
51. German Office of Sanitation, Influenza Mortality, German Armed Forces, 1917-1919
52. The Times (London), Awaiting the Enemy Attack, July 12, 1918
53. The Daily Express (London), New Attack in the North?, July 18, 1918
54. C. W. Vining, Treatment of Influenza, November 30, 1918
55. The Union of South Africa, Bill to Make Provision for the Public Health, January 6, 1919
56. South African Medical Record, New Public Health Bill, January 11, 1919
57. Sierra Leone Weekly News, The Health of Freetown, September 21, 1918
58. Lagos Standard, Failure of British Authorities, October 2, 1918
59. Buchi Emecheta, The Slave Girl, 1977
60. Young India, Famine and Grip Sweeping India, February 1919
61. Young India, Editorial Notes and News, May 1919
62. Cary T. Grayson, Statement About Wilson’s Health at the Paris Peace Conference, 1960
63. Irwin Hood Hoover, The Truth About Wilson’s Illness, 1934
64. Herbert Hoover, Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference, 1942
Appendixes
A Chronology of the Influenza Pandemic and Related Events, 1918-1929
Questions for Consideration
Selected Bibliography
Index
Authors
Susan K. Kent
Susan Kingsley Kent (Ph.D., Brandeis University) is professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Specializing in British history, her scholarly works focus on gender, politics, empire, and the Great War. She is the author of Gender and History; Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain, 1918-1931; Gender and Power in Britain, 1660-1990; Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain; Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914; The History of Western Civilization since 1500: An Ecological Approach; and, with Misty L. Bastian and Marc Matera, The Womens War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria.
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