National Archives Recalls Flu Pandemic of 1918

The following announcement was written by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

With concerns of a new flu pandemic, a look back at an old one

This alert is based on a National Archives online exhibit titled "Deadly Virus, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918," at http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/records-list.html. This site offers high-res downloads of documents and images from that time.

True or False?

The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people than died in World War I.

Hard as it is to believe, the answer is true.

World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world's population was attacked by this deadly virus. Within months, it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.

The plague emerged in two phases. In late spring of 1918, the first phase, known as the "three-day fever," appeared without warning. Few deaths were reported. Victims recovered after a few days. When the disease resurfaced that fall, it was far more severe. Scientists, doctors, and health officials could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, eluding treatment and defying control. Some victims died within hours of their first symptoms. Others succumbed after a few days; their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death.

The plague did not discriminate. It was rampant in urban and rural areas, from the densely populated East coast to the remotest parts of Alaska. Young adults, usually unaffected by these types of infectious diseases, were among the hardest hit groups along with the elderly and young children. The flu afflicted over 25 percent of the U.S. population. In one year, the average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years.

It is an oddity of history that the influenza epidemic of 1918 has been overlooked in the teaching of American history. Documentation of the disease is ample, as shown in the records selected from the holdings of the National Archives regional archives.

Comments

[bet]

Thanks for this interesting article. We should heed the lessons from it. If the flu makes you prostate, stay that way and we should be aware of the danger in the fall.

[Dae Powell]

It was called the Spanish Flu, though the name is not based on any known reality. This modern plague started at a military camp in Kansas, Camp Funston, in April of 1918. It was an army cook, Albert Gitchell who first took ill, complaining of flu-like symptoms. And, since Mitchell was one of the camp cooks, he spread the disease rapidly: By noon the next day, another 107 soldiers in the camp were infected. Two weeks later, 522 had the disease.

It should be pointed out that to this day no one knows how this new strain of flu started. It is widely assumed that it was a variation of swine flu that jumped species; others claim that the germ became airborne because the Army burned the 9 tons of manure its animal stock created every day. The current theory is that it might have been some type of avian flu, but no one is really sure.

The one thing we do know is that the flu spread quickly from camp to camp, as our doughboys moved around preparing to move on to Europe and the Great War. This strain of influenza was vicious; within days of contracting the disease the most consuming type of pneumonia would set in, slowly suffocating its victims.

Not too surprisingly, our government said nothing about the massive numbers of American soldiers who were falling ill and dying. Worse, there was no real attempt to isolate people who had caught this modern-day plague. On the contrary, soldiers suffering from the flu were transferred to other camps or shipped out to Europe. Within weeks, every state in the Union reported new cases of infection - and the flu spread around the world within months. Millions died, some say 8 million in just one month: May of 1918.

·Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Randy]

My dad's family all came down with it. They were all very sick in bed and cousins took care of the farm. But fortunately no one died of it.

When you interview your elders, don't forget to ask them about the diseases that are now nearly extinct: smallpox (supposedly, my maternal grandmother had smallpox scars), polio (I had an uncle who came down with polio while fishing near Ely, MN with his wife for their 15th anniversary and the ambulance had a police escort the 60 miles to Duluth, where an iron lung waited - he died at the end of the week), German measles, consumption/tuberculosis (g-grandmother and several relatives who died), Bright's Disease (g-grandfather and others), diptheria, typhoid fever (my paternal grandfather got typhus eating snow when he was in Canada), mumps (my mom had both kinds, inner and outer), even chicken pox (I had it, my dad had a bad case, but his brother only had one spot on his forehead, but later developed very bad case of shingles). These diseases that you may never have even heard of may be very important to your ancestry.

[Christine Czarnecki]

I have an unusual family story associated with the 1918 influenza epidemic

My grandmother's sister, Lillie Pearl (Motley) Stephenson was a young, newly married woman living in a small town in west Texas. She fell ill and died of the "Spanish Flu," and there was nothing that the family could do to save her.

Her engagement ring, an opal surrounded by seed pearls, was given to my grandmother, her youngest sister.

Later, the ring was given to my mother as her engagement ring, and then to me as my engagement ring. My daughter has said she would also like to have the ring as her engagement ring. It is a treasured family piece, but sometimes I look at it and think of my Great Aunt Pearl who died at such a young age, such a loss to her family and husband.

[Ana Montalvo]

My great-grandfather died in 1922 of pneumonia and, with that limited information, I have often thought that he might have been another victim of the 1918 epidemic even in the Peruvian border with Bolivia.

What is interesting to note is that penicillin and other antibiotics were not invented yet at that time and I imagine that, if he had lived in our era, he might have had a chance of survival.

Ana Montalvo
Thousand Oaks, CA

[Donald Gradeless]

I can remember my great grandmother telling how less than a week afer she returned home from her father's funeral she was notified that her mother had died and was already buried. The death certificates confirmed they had both died of "influenza". Milo Baker died 30 August 1918 and his wife Harriet Myers Baker died on the 13th of September 1918 in Geneva Township, Van Buren County. Michigan.

[Debi Ham]

My grandmother was born in 1907 in Maine and her grandfather was a funeral director in Maryland. She can remember her grandmother writing letters to her during the epidemic describing how bodies were piling up outside the funeral home because they couldn't keep up with them. BTW, my grandmother is 102 and still lives in Maine!

[Steve Gauss]

My gr-grandfather's son by his first wife, who died as a result of childbirth, shipped to France in World War I and within a short time had died of the flu. Gr-grandfather never really recovered from the shock of his death and I was named for him.

[gmf]

Interesting comments. Had the "Flu" not caused the death of the man who was engaged to my mother-in-law I would have married some one else as my spouse would not have been born!!

[Judy]

My ggrandmother died from this flu. She left 6 children my grandmother the oldest at home (18 yrs) to raise the 5 younger siblings. She only had 2 kids I often wondered if that was why?

[Susanna Stern Friedman]

My mother was 25 at the time of the Epidemic and was working in a sweat shop in New York, having immigrated with her parents, brother and her mother's nephew in the winter of 1899 when she was 6. Her girlfriend Pauline got sick, and my mother went to take care of her despite her mother's pleas. I don't know why I never asked if she had any family to care for her! Pauline survived. As a gift she embroidered a very beautiful cushion cover "The Last Rose of Summer" which was stolen in the 1990's, unfortunately, when my Mother was ill and had a caretaker. When I asked about the cushion many years ago, this is the story I was told.