The Spanish Flu

The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 was the worst pandemic of modern times, claiming over 30 million lives in less than six months. In the hardest hit societies, everything else was put aside in a bid to cope with its ravages. It left millions orphaned and medical science desperate to find its cause. Despite the magnitude of its impact, few scholarly attempts have been made to examine this calamity in its many-sided complexity. On a global, multidisciplinary scale, the book seeks to apply the insights of a wide range of social and medical sciences to an investigation of the pandemic. Topics covered include the historiography of the pandemic, its virology, the enormous demographic impact, the medical and governmental responses it elicited, and its long-term effects, particularly the recent attempts to identify the precise causative virus from specimens taken from flu victims in 1918, or victims buried in the Arctic permafrost at that time.

*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the pandemic from doctors and survivors *Includes a bibliography for further reading "One of the startling features of the pandemic was its sudden flaring up and its equally sudden decline, reminding one of a flame consuming highly combustible material, which died down as soon as the supply of the material was exhausted. There is every reason to believe that, within a few weeks of its onset, the infection was universally present in the nose and throat of the people, disseminated by mouth spray given off on talking by innumerable carriers and, in addition, by the coughing and sneezing of the sick. Susceptibility was very general, though it varied greatly in degree. Among those who escaped well marked sickness there are few who could not recall having had an occluded or running nose, or a raw feeling in the throat, or a cough, or aches and pains, at some time during the period of the prevalence of the disease, these probably representing the price such persons paid for their immunization." - Dr. Bernard Fantus In many ways, it is hard for modern people living in First World countries to conceive of a pandemic sweeping around the world and killing millions of people, and it is even harder to believe that something as common as influenza could cause such widespread illness and death. Although the flu still takes hundreds of lives each year, most of those lost are very young or old or ill with something else that had already weakened them. In fact, most people contract influenza at least once, and many suffer from the flu several times in their lives and survive it with a minimum amount of medical attention. In 1918, the world was still in the throes of the Great War, the deadliest conflict in human history at that point, but while World War I would be a catastrophic war surpassed only by World War II, an unprecedented influenza outbreak that same year inflicted casualties that would make both wars pale in comparison. An illness, or more likely a collection of illnesses, Spanish influenza quickly spread across the world and may have killed upwards of 100 million people, decimating populations across developed nations and possibly wiping out as much as 5% of the world's population. If anything, the ongoing war and the censorship maintained by the countries fighting it may have resulted in the actual toll of the outbreak being underestimated based on the way soldiers' deaths were categorized. World War I may have distracted people about the unprecedented nature of the outbreak, but the most alarming aspect of the outbreak in 1918 was the indiscriminate nature in which the scourge attacked young and old, healthy and unhealthy, and rich and poor alike. In fact, the popular name for the outbreak was a reference to the fact that Spain's own king was stricken with the disease. While he and President Woodrow Wilson ended up surviving it, former First Lady Rose Cleveland did not. The staggering number of fatalities, and the way in which seemingly anybody could suffer during the outbreak, taught people in the early 20th century that regardless of the tremendous strides made by technology, and no matter how stalemated the war was, nobody was safe from nature itself. Of course, it also demonstrated how much more work could be done to prevent similar occurrences. The 1918 pandemic was neither the first nor the last outbreak of the flu, but it was by far the worst, and it forever changed the face of medicine and public health care in both North America and Europe. The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World's Deadliest Outbreak chronicles the devastating disease and the damage it wrought across the globe. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about the 1918 flu outbreak like never before, in no time at all.

Health crises such as the SARS epidemic and H1N1 have rekindled interest in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which swept the globe after the First World War and killed approximately fifty million people. Epidemic Encounters zeroes in on Canada, where one-third of the population took ill and fifty-five thousand people died, to consider the various ways in which this country was affected by the pandemic. How did military and medical authorities, health care workers, and ordinary citizens respond? What role did social inequalities play in determining who survived? Contributors answer these questions as they pertained to both local and national contexts. In the process, they offer new insights into medical history's usefulness in the struggle against epidemic disease.

A look at the 1918 influenza pandemic from its outbreak to its effects on the global population and its legacy. On the second Monday of March, 1918, the world changed forever. What seemed like a harmless cold morphed into a global pandemic that would wipe out as many as a hundred-million people—ten times as many as the Great War. German troops faltered, lending the allies the winning advantage, and India turned its sights to independence while South Africa turned to God. In Western Samoa, a quarter of the population died; in some parts of Alaska, whole villages were wiped out. Civil unrest sparked by influenza shaped nations and heralded a new era of public health where people were no longer blamed for contracting disease. Using real case histories, we take a journey through the world in 1918, and look at the impact of Spanish flu on populations from America to France and the Arctic, and at the scientific legacy this deadly virus has left behind. “Breitnauer puts the whole thing into perspective with a fascinating account of the origin and extent of the outbreak, at a time when people were returning from the conflict expecting a brave new world and instead confronting one of the deadliest epidemics ever to hit mankind.” —Books Monthly (UK)

The ‘Spanish’ influenza of 1918 was the deadliest pandemic in history, killing as many as 50 million people worldwide. Canadian federal public health officials tried to prevent the disease from entering the country by implementing a maritime quarantine, as had been their standard practice since the cholera epidemics of 1832. But the 1918 flu was a different type of disease. In spite of the best efforts of both federal and local officials, up to fifty thousand Canadians died. In The Last Plague, Mark Osborne Humphries examines how federal epidemic disease management strategies developed before the First World War, arguing that the deadliest epidemic in Canadian history ultimately challenged traditional ideas about disease and public health governance. Using federal, provincial, and municipal archival sources, newspapers, and newly discovered military records – as well as original epidemiological studies – Humphries' sweeping national study situates the flu within a larger social, political, and military context for the first time. His provocative conclusion is that the 1918 flu crisis had important long-term consequences at the national level, ushering in the ‘modern’ era of public health in Canada.

What if we could finally shed light on the 1918 Spanish Flu, the influenza that killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century? 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease and some aspects still not clarified. The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was the deadliest pandemic in history. The 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the United States and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world. The virus H1N1 infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, which at that time was about one-third of the planet's population, and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including 675,000 Americans, because at the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. "The "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, which caused approximately 50 million deaths worldwide, remains an ominous warning to public health. Many questions about its origins, its unusual epidemiologic features, and the basis of its pathogenicity remain unanswered. [...] Understanding the 1918 pandemic and its implications for future pandemics requires careful experimentation and in-depth historical analysis." - PubMed "1918 Spanish Flu: Causes, facts and numbers of the deadliest ever world influenza Pandemic" by Sean Locke will try to finally shed light on the deadliest pandemic of human history thanks to reliable data and statistics. Here is what you are going to find inside of "1918 Spanish Flu": The question of the place of origin and the time of origin Reliable data and statistics The structure surrounding the spread of influenza Lesson learnt from 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: world impact and economic consequences Differences between other pandemics ...and much, much more! Scroll up and add to cart "1918 Spanish Flu" by Sean Locke! About the author: Sean Locke was born in 1976 in Tampa, Florida. He love history since he was only 9 years old as this was his favorite subject. Has always had top marks in history, but he is always been also good in science and scientific subjects in general. Sean Locke's passion for history remained for his whole life even if he decided to follow a medical biotechnology career. In the last years Sean started gathering information about some viruses he had to study as a biotechnologist, including H1N1 virus, responsible of the spread of Spanish Flu in 1918. Sean Locke's passion for history pushed him to also gathering information about historical and economic consequences of the spread of this influenza. The result of his researches were collected in a book, "1918 Spanish Flu", which tries to shed light on the not clarified aspects of the pandemic. Sean Locke's book is clear and easy to understand even if it contains specific and scientific explanations, everybody can read it without difficulties. Scroll up and add to cart "1918 Spanish Flu" by Sean Locke!

When the deadly corona virus rampages through the world, here is a look back to a pandemic that shook the world 100 years ago. Yes, about the Spanish Flu, aka, 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Here in this book you could have a rove through the wordings which refers or references the 1918 Influenza, the flu pandemic.

The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic is now widely recognized as the most devastating disease outbreak in recorded history. This cultural history reconstructs Spaniards' experience of the flu and traces the emergence of various competing narratives that arose in response to bacteriology's failure to explain and contain the disease's spread.