Influenza in 1918: An Epidemic in Images - 1 views
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In army camps and cantonments, in hospitals, and in streets and workplaces across the nation, photographers aimed their lenses and captured a nation struggling to deal with the crisis.
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In the fall of 1918, against the tragic backdrop of war and disease,
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That said, even a small sample of America and Americans in the midst of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 is a powerful message indeed.
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Some four million men were mobilized in the U.S. Armed Forces. Training camps and stations were often overcrowded. Soldiers and sailors routinely were packed on to passenger trains and sent to training stations and bases around the nation
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When influenza struck the United States in the fall of 1918, it almost universally appeared in military populations before hitting civilian communities. Medical officers attempted to contain the epidemic through a host of measures, including nasal-pharyngeal sprays for all troops, quarantine of new arrivals, and isolation of cases in camp hospitals or special emergency
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As the influenza epidemic raged, scientists and physicians struggled to isolate the causative microbe and to develop an effective vaccine against it.
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Quacks and naysayers, on the other hand, advocated a host of alternatives such as raw onions rubbed on the chest, creosote baths, and the consumption of large quantities of brown sugar. Some—including several city health officers—claimed that a clean heart, clean bowels, or warm feet were all that was needed to stave off influenza.
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Health officers, mayors, and city councils ordered theaters, movie houses, dance halls, saloons, schools, churches, and other places of public gathering to close for the duration of the epidemic.
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In the three decades after 1890, nearly 24 million immigrants arrived on the shores of the United States
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Seattle saw a drastic drop-off in the number of marriage license applications during the epidemic (although, interestingly, the number of divorce filings increased).5
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World War I did not just affect soldiers, sailors, and Marines. On the home front, civilians were expected to contribute to the war effort as well by self-rationing food, fabric, gasoline, and other goods, and by purchasing Liberty bonds.
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people in close proximity to one another. In the East, where the deadly fall wave
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American Red Cross, the Visiting Nurse Association, the Blue Circle Nurses, the Public Health Nurses, and others played a vital role during the influenza epidemic, providing nursing care to the ill, staffing emergency hospitals, organizing volunteers, coordinating relief efforts, assembling gauze face masks, and operating ambulances. Communities across the nation were overwhelmed by the
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magnitude of the crisis,
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Local courts, on the other hand, had more flexibility in how they met the crisis
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The 1918 influenza pandemic took a horrible toll of death and destruction in the United States
