The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918: How the US Reacted (eBook)

Efforts Made to Combat and Subdue the Disease in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania

Oscar Jewell Harvey (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 1. Auflage
50 Seiten
e-artnow (Verlag)
978-4-06-605841-0 (ISBN)

Infos

In time when coronavirus pandemic is raging all over the US with more than 740,000 confirmed cases and more than160,000 deaths, this book will show you the American reaction to the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. More than 100 years ago the most severe pandemic in recent history caused by an H1N1 virus has spread around the world. It took about 675,000 lives in the United States only and more than 50 million worldwide. This informative read explains how American authorities reacted to the pandemic and how they organized the defense against the deadly disease.

Textauszug

EARLY in September, 1918, the United States was invaded by a scourge of highly infectious and fatal disease, which spread with rapidity throughout the country. It was pandemic in its nature, and partook of many of the characteristics of influenza, grip and pneumonia. No one seemed to know much about the disease or its treatment, and medical science and public health agencies were alike unprepared to cope with it.

About all that could be done at the start was to adopt and attempt to enforce drastic regulations to minimize contagion; but even in view of these regulations, and when the plague had burst forth in all its widespread malignity, the country at large seemed slow to awaken to the enormity of the peril which it faced.

It certainly was a disconcerting fact that, at the very time when vast numbers of the people in widely-distributed localities had organized themselves, through the Red Cross and other well known and efficient mediums, to fight disease and prevent suffering and death, we should be smitten with a visitation which caused more casualties and deaths among the peaceful citizens in the homeland than the deadly missiles and poisonous gases of the enemy effected among the American Expeditionary Forces overseas in the great World War.

From September 9 to November 9, according to reports received by the Federal Census Bureau from forty-six large cities in the United States having a combined population of 23,000,000 souls, there was a total of 82,306 deaths attributed to the scourge. In a similar period of time, in the same communities, the normal number of deaths dues to influenza and pneumonia would have been about 4,000.

In the latter part of September 85,000 cases in Massachusetts alone were reported; and by the first week in October the disease was prevalent in nearly all sections of the United States— twenty-three States, from Massachusetts in the East to California in the West, and from Florida in the South-east to Washington in the North-west, were experiencing the mysterious malady. More than 14,000 cases in the military camps of the country were reported to the office of the Surgeon General of the Army within one period of twenty-four hours.

Up to January 4, 1919, according to the Census Bureau, the mortality due to the fatal disease was 115,258 in forty-six cities of the United States containing one-fifth of the population of the country; while, according to statistics submitted to the Actuarial Society of America in July, 1919, 450,000 deaths occurred in the United States in the Autumn and early Winter of 1918 due to this pandemic disease—which wrought its greatest havoc among infants and persons in adult working life. The mortality of males was greater than that of females, while the highest mortality caused by the disease affected persons of the wage-earning class—especially those situated in the lowest economic range.

The origin or source of the disease was unknown. Some experts looked upon it as simply a variety of a well-known disease prevalent, with occasional outbreaks of violence, for hundreds of years. Others attempted to identify it with a form of pneumonic plague that has raged in parts of China for a number of years past—China and its neighboring lands in Asia forming a vast storehouse of infection from which great epidemics have swept in waves across and around the globe.

It is an historic fact that, in the early part of 1917 about 200,000 coolies, collected from the northern part of China (where the pneumonic plague had raged for six or seven years), were sent to France as laborers, and with them went the germs of the pneumonic plague. Many of these coolies were captured by the Germans in the Spring of 1918—hence the outbreak of the plague, at that time, in the German army, where it is said to have been very serious in its deadly character.

There were some writers of the press who declared that the disease had been brought into this country in German submarine boats; but when it was realized that, like a scourge of the Middle Ages, it was sweeping through Europe—no part of which, civilized or barbarian, was exempt—it was called by many experts a by-product of the World War.

The manner of the pandemic's appearance in different countries indicated that the germs of the disease had been conveyed thither by the currents of the air. Therefore the theory was broached, that the poison gases, with which many sectors of the fighting area in Europe and Asia were drenched, were carried by the winds in every direction, causing the outbreak of the pandemic in England, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, Africa and Asia, as well as in North America and some of the South American countries.

The disease took its deadly toll even in lonely Labrador, in the "silent North" of the Western Hemisphere, where ice-floes from farther north fill every harbor of the rock-bound coast; where giant icebergs, miles in length, mountains in height and acres in extent bar the paths of ships and steamers. "A land where railroads are unknown, where streets are never laid nor roads built to connect one settlement with another; a country where horses and cows are less known than are the rhinoceros and zebra to the inhabitants of the United States; a region where even canned milk is a luxury and candy is seldom seen."

On all the desolate coast of Labrador, extending over eight degrees of latitude, not a doctor nor a trained nurse, not a hospital nor a dispensary, not even a health officer, was to be found. Eskimo and Indian, German and Briton, halfbreed and white, hunter and fisherman, fell victims to the dreaded scourge, which traveled with rapidity. Whole settlements were left without a single survivor—the unburied corpses being devoured by halfstarved dogs. This is the story that came out of the "silent North"—the most gruesome, most awful, tale of disease and death that the world has heard in many a day!

Following the outbreak of the scourge in Germany it was next heard of in Spain, where it received the name "Spanish influenza". This is really a misnomer, but it has stuck, probably because the disease to which it was applied was the first epidemic of influenza Spain had ever experienced. This name accompanied the disease to the United States, where, by some slangologists, it was early transmogrified into "flu"—by which appellation it has been pretty commonly designated.

The scourge invaded Pennsylvania about the middle of September, 1918, simultaneously attacking widely-separated communities. On October 1 the Department of Health of the Commonwealth issued orders directing the closing of all moving picture houses, theaters and places of amusement in general; that public assemblages be discontinued; that funerals be privately conducted; that all bar-rooms and wholesale liquor establishments be closed. The matter of closing schools, churches and Sunday schools was left to the discretion of local authorities. In addition, the Department issued proclamations and appeals for hearty co-operation on the part of the general public in checking the ravages of the scourge.

In Wilkes-Barre on October 3, 4 and 5 the directions and appeals of the State Department of Health were promptly and cheerfully compiled with (even clubs and the various fraternal orders and societies observing the mandates, while the sessions of the Courts of Luzerne County for the week beginning October 7 were continued and postponed), although on the first day of the appearance of the disease here only twenty cases were officially reported.

Owing to the absence of many local physicians and trained nurses in the military and naval services of the United States, Wyoming Valley Chapter of the Red Cross issued an appeal on October 3 for trained nurses and for women with some nursing experience to register with the Chapter for service in combating the disease here.

Under the date of October 8 the Commissioner of Health of Pennsylvania issued a circular letter to Department of Health and other physicians "engaged in the State-wide organization against the Influenza Epidemic," in which, among other things, the following information and instructions were set forth:

"From close observation of the progress of the pandemic of influenza which is now sweeping upon us from the Atlantic seaboard, it has been decided by the Governor of this Commonwealth, the Commissioner of Health and the Advisory Board of the Pennsylvania Department of Health to use the organization at hand, and all available organizations that will co-operate to the utmost, in an effort to save the lives of our people. Accordingly, after careful thought, the following [among other] plans have been adopted:

"The State Department of Health to be in absolute control and take full responsibility.

"The formation of nineteen Epidemic Emergency Districts, with a representative of the Department in full charge of each district, taking his orders directly from the Commissioner of Health and transmitting them to those who answer the call.

"Appeals to all Health, Patriotic, Civic, Religious, Business and Social organizations, such as the Red Cross (graduates in elementary hygiene and home care of the sick, or first aid). Associated Charities, Boards of Health, Mayors, Councils, County Commissioners, Directors of the Poor, Boards of Trade, Church Societies, Fraternal Orders, Women's Clubs, Boy Scouts, Motor Messenger Corps, trained nurses, practical attendants, lay workers and volunteer automobilists, to lend all possible assistance under the direction of the Department.

"The Adjutant General has placed the entire State Guard, and all the equipment of his department, at our disposal for the erection of emergency hospitals, furnishing of supplies, safe-guarding of property and the maintenance of discipline.

"Requests for aid...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.4.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Innere Medizin ► Pneumologie
• ISBN-10: 4-06-605841-8 / 4066058418
• ISBN-13: 978-4-06-605841-0 / 9784066058410