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What Caused The Influenza Of 1918

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There has been deadly diseases recorded throughout the history in the world. Millions of people died. The officials did not know what was wrong and why so many people were dieing so quickly. The Influenza of 1918 was a global disaster, it killed nearly between 30 and 50 million people world wide. Influenza of 1918 has been considered to be the most deadly pandemic recorded. It killed more people in a year than the people in World War I. It was estimated that 675,000 Americans died from 1918 to 1919 (“The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918-1919,” n.d). The disease spread so fast that some states could not keep track of the pandemic and did not report to Public Health Services. The Public Health Service did not have enough doctors or nurses to help. …show more content…

Many of the facilities like school or community centers were transformed into emergency hospitals. As the disease spread, everything in the cities went down. There were no telephone or mail services because everyone were so sick to work. Later, when bodies started piling up, there were no caskets and the morgues were full of bodies. There was no protection against the disease because officials did not know about the virus at the time. In the beginning, scientist thought that influenza was caused by bacteria called Pfeiffer’s bacillus. However, they could not find any traces of that bacteria. Scientist and physicians could not figure out the right cause of the influenza and it was unknown (“The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918-1919,” n.d). Influenza could have been treated with vaccinations, but at the time they were unaware that it was virus that caused the

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It rapidly swept through cities and thousands of residents fled. In the 1830s another epidemic appeared, cholera. It spread quickly through towns, and also caused people to flee. 3,000 people died in New York, and 5,000 people in New Orleans. Diphtheria killed thousands as well, many of them children.

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Doctors were frantic; going from one patient to another. There was just no method or theory about how the fever was spreading. Each day, more and more people were dying or becoming infected. The capital of the United States knew, this was no ordinary epidemic. Days passed, and the city turned into chaos.

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During these epidemics accounts by Europeans, and natives were taken documenting the terrible conditions people faced. “The people were overcome by intense cold and fever, The disease was rampant everywhere, It was uncountable the number of people who died this year (DOC 7)” This document shows how terrible diseases were for the native populations, because the natives had not evolved and lived in the same environment as the Europeans they could not tolerate certain illnesses that the Europeans could. In Document 8 you can see an illustration of a man in méxico suffering from a disease in which you are covered in bumps and slowly die. Another reason why disease ran so wildly at the time were because of how Europeans lived.

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If war can eliminate people 's lives, so can a plague. The Black Death was the disastrous pandemic of mankind. This plague swiped over Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. Back then, insufficient of research of medical studies aided the spread of the Black Death. Variety of factors contributed to lack of research.

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In the text it states that, “And those who were responsible for the dead carried them on their backs in the night in which they died and threw them into the ditch, or else they paid a high price to those who would do it for them” (Document 4). This goes to show that many people feared carrying the dead knowing that they might catch the disease themselves. This spread the infection to people trying to dispose of their families corpses. The amount of bodies piled up and up forcing them to: “put layer on layer just like one puts layers of cheese in a lasagna” (Document 4).

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During the end of World War 1, a virulent strain of influenza, publicly known as the Spanish flu spread throughout the world. Over 4% of the population had been wiped out due to the severity of it. During this time era, there were no effective drugs or vaccines discovered to treat the flu and social and geopolitical conditions were extremely subpar. The war had used most of societies health resources leaving the population at risk. Along with these conditions, there were mutations in this strain of flu that made it hard for the immune system to prevail and pneumonia was the fatal factor.

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Life was basically put on hold, wars were also put on hold, and there wasn’t really anything you could do about it. Trade was one part that was affected, and it did for a good while. There weren't many resources being traded because there weren’t many workers (they died) and trading stuff at that point in time was not very good because that was how the plague spread the most. This plague caused many economic and social problems as well. People were scared to go out, so they lost most of their connections to the outside world, and there weren’t really ways to keep up with what was going on or with each other.

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Before the Black Death, hospitals were just places were the sick were taken to be isolated, so they would not infect others. Hospitals at this time did not do much for a person’s sick body and health because most people at this time believed that someone got sick because they had committed a sin. This was because religion was what people during this time based their lives on (Black Death). During this time hospitals did more for the soul than they did for the body. These hospitals were more like present-day hospices.

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The flu struck while many soldiers were moving around the world, thus carrying the disease with them. At the time, all the men traveling were confined to small spaces such as hospitals and hospitals, allowing the virus to spiral out of

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Detrimental epidemics, such as the excruciating Yellow Fever, Malaria, and Smallpox outbreaks, resulted in the devastation of numerous populations. Aside from the elderly

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Influenza 1918 is the story of the worst epidemic the United States has ever known. What were other names for it? The 1918 Influenza was known as the Spanish flu as well as the mother flu. How many Americans died?

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In the United States when it made its way through military camps, people began to see how bad the virus really was. Pathologists and the Army medical officers warned against the shipping of soldiers and other wartime activities, but were ignored. Even though there were many warnings, it was decisions like these by Generals and Army officials to ship soldiers that made the situation much more dire. As World War I was a high priority, if citizens found out how deadly the flu was, it would harm their “morale” and patriotism, particularly in America. People in higher positions assured citizens that the flu was not dangerous.

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The origin of the influenza of 1918 has long been debated. The predominant theory is that it first appeared in the American Midwest in March 1918 and spread to soldiers in camps across the U.S. where medical officials reported high rates of influenza but few deaths, as previously stated. The virus then made its way to Europe to the Western Front where in May and June it sickened thousands of soldiers but killed few in this first wave. In the harsh conditions of trench warfare the virus flourished, possibly mutating into an especially contagious strain that exploded to create a global catastrophe in August 1918.

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