Read Online Outbreak! Plagues That Changed History by Bryn Barnard - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bryn Barnard
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of the isolated aboriginal populations in Alaska and the Pacific, nearly everyone perished.
“The Purple Death” didn’t just kill huge numbers of people; it shaped world events. The epidemic was a major player in the final battles of World War I and had a role in the shaping of the Versailles peace treaty. It totally overwhelmed the ability of even the best-prepared governments to care for the living and bury the dead. It catalyzed the creation of today’s global influenza surveillance system and the cycle of annual autumn flu shots. Most important of all, scientific research into the nature of the Spanish flu uncovered something totally new and unexpected that would revolutionize medicine: the first antibiotic.
In San Francisco, during the height of the epidemic, masked revelers celebrated the armistice that ended World War I.
A bloody chessboard
Politically, economically, and socially, World War I was an epochal event that demolished the existingorder and created many of the conflicts we live with today. When the war started in August 1914, Europe was a patchwork of ancient, tottering monarchies and empires, stitched together by intermarriage and allied against one another by secret treaties. It ended in November 1918 with armistice: the theatrical “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” Czarist Russia had collapsed, the Soviet Union was born, and the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires were dismantled. Iraq was created out of several Ottoman provinces. Palestine was made a British mandate, paving the way for the creation of the State of Israel and its attendant problems. Imperial Germany, on whom the entire disaster was blamed, was humiliated, stripped of its colonies, and saddled with crushing reparations.
The blame on Spain
World War I was a disease-conscious war. Only nine years before, the Russo-Japanese War (the first major conflict that occurred after the discoveries of Pasteur and Koch) had shown that with proper sanitation among the troops, deaths from disease could be less than those from combat. This was significant: in nearly all past military conflicts, more soldiers died from infectious disease than from battle. With this example in mind, military leaders on both sides in the Great War took extraordinary precautions to prevent epidemics among their troops. They were especially concerned about typhus, a bacterial disease carried by fleas and human body lice. It thrives in conditions where people cannot bathe regularly or change their clothes. At the beginning of the war, both armies were especially vigilant about delousing soldiers returning from the front lines. In Serbia, however, sanitation broke down. During 1914 alone, a typhus epidemic there killed over two hundred thousand people. After the war, that disease spread to the freshly minted Soviet Union, where in four years it killed
ten million
people. Lenin is said to have remarked, “Either socialism will defeat the louse or the louse will defeat socialism.” (Socialism won.) As bad as typhus was, however, the flu was worse. No army had ever encountered a disease as murderous as the “Spanish Lady.”
The flu was called Spanish not because it started in Spain but because it was first reported in newspapers there. Why? Because Spain remained neutral in the war and therefore its military didn’t censor the press. People were getting sick everywhere, but in the nations at war—including the United States—any news that might help the enemy was suppressed.
The first
recorded
incidence of Spanish flu was in the United States at Fort Riley, Kansas, in March 1918. This first spring wave of the flu epidemic was a mild three-day illness that caused aches, fever, chills, a red face, and a weeklong hangover. As it spread to the war zone, doctors called this spring flu a “delightful disease” (everybody ill, nobody dying), but the soldiers weren’t nearly so grateful. The French griped about
la grippe
. The
“The Purple Death” didn’t just kill huge numbers of people; it shaped world events. The epidemic was a major player in the final battles of World War I and had a role in the shaping of the Versailles peace treaty. It totally overwhelmed the ability of even the best-prepared governments to care for the living and bury the dead. It catalyzed the creation of today’s global influenza surveillance system and the cycle of annual autumn flu shots. Most important of all, scientific research into the nature of the Spanish flu uncovered something totally new and unexpected that would revolutionize medicine: the first antibiotic.
In San Francisco, during the height of the epidemic, masked revelers celebrated the armistice that ended World War I.
A bloody chessboard
Politically, economically, and socially, World War I was an epochal event that demolished the existingorder and created many of the conflicts we live with today. When the war started in August 1914, Europe was a patchwork of ancient, tottering monarchies and empires, stitched together by intermarriage and allied against one another by secret treaties. It ended in November 1918 with armistice: the theatrical “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” Czarist Russia had collapsed, the Soviet Union was born, and the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires were dismantled. Iraq was created out of several Ottoman provinces. Palestine was made a British mandate, paving the way for the creation of the State of Israel and its attendant problems. Imperial Germany, on whom the entire disaster was blamed, was humiliated, stripped of its colonies, and saddled with crushing reparations.
The blame on Spain
World War I was a disease-conscious war. Only nine years before, the Russo-Japanese War (the first major conflict that occurred after the discoveries of Pasteur and Koch) had shown that with proper sanitation among the troops, deaths from disease could be less than those from combat. This was significant: in nearly all past military conflicts, more soldiers died from infectious disease than from battle. With this example in mind, military leaders on both sides in the Great War took extraordinary precautions to prevent epidemics among their troops. They were especially concerned about typhus, a bacterial disease carried by fleas and human body lice. It thrives in conditions where people cannot bathe regularly or change their clothes. At the beginning of the war, both armies were especially vigilant about delousing soldiers returning from the front lines. In Serbia, however, sanitation broke down. During 1914 alone, a typhus epidemic there killed over two hundred thousand people. After the war, that disease spread to the freshly minted Soviet Union, where in four years it killed
ten million
people. Lenin is said to have remarked, “Either socialism will defeat the louse or the louse will defeat socialism.” (Socialism won.) As bad as typhus was, however, the flu was worse. No army had ever encountered a disease as murderous as the “Spanish Lady.”
The flu was called Spanish not because it started in Spain but because it was first reported in newspapers there. Why? Because Spain remained neutral in the war and therefore its military didn’t censor the press. People were getting sick everywhere, but in the nations at war—including the United States—any news that might help the enemy was suppressed.
The first
recorded
incidence of Spanish flu was in the United States at Fort Riley, Kansas, in March 1918. This first spring wave of the flu epidemic was a mild three-day illness that caused aches, fever, chills, a red face, and a weeklong hangover. As it spread to the war zone, doctors called this spring flu a “delightful disease” (everybody ill, nobody dying), but the soldiers weren’t nearly so grateful. The French griped about
la grippe
. The
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