Paula Schultz

History 193
Research Project
April 18, 2016

The Spanish Flu

The Pandemic of the Spanish Influenza killed more people than the first world war and
struck quickly and with no warning. Although there were over 38 million casualties from WW1,
the Spanish Flu was even more devastating killing more than 50 million worldwide with mostly
people between the ages of 20 and 40. The exact virus that caused it was never found, but one
possibility according to Kennedy Shortridge, was that the virus had been with us maybe fifty
years or so before and had started as a bird flu and then changed to a swine flu.
Doctors and scientists were confused when this disease hit. At first they were thinking it
was merely the common cold or a viral infection, but they quickly learned that this was different.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services describes the symptoms this way,
Early symptoms of the disease now included a temperature in the range of 102 to 104 degrees.
Along with this high temperature, patients also experienced a sore throat, exhaustion, headache,
aching limbs, bloodshot eyes, a cough and occasionally a violent nosebleed. (USDHHS) This
article goes on to say that some patients also experienced diarrhea and vomiting and most
patients with these symptoms recovered. They go on to say,
Many patients recovered only to suffer a relapse. Their temperatures, which had fallen, rose
again and they now experienced serious respiratory problems. In some cases, these patients also

experienced massive pulmonary hemorrhages. After death, pathologists found these victims to
have swollen lungs and oversized spleens. (USDHHS)

The Great Pandemic also hit our state of Maryland hard. It first appeared at Ft. Mead,
then called Camp Mead, on September 17th 1918. Fort Mead was hit the hardest and it was
believed that it was passed from there by the transportation routes throughout the state. At the
end of September, the state had filed a report of 1,713 cases. The disease continued to escalate as
referenced in the USDHHS which states, By mid-October, there were so many cases that state
officials were unable to file a report. (USDHHS) At Johns Hopkins Hospital, influenza patients
occupied six full wards. Ultimately, the hospital was forced to close its doors altogether.
(USDHHS) By summertime of the following year the disease had greatly dissipated.
Maryland was just a small sample of what was happening worldwide. As Susan Kingsley
Kent states in her book The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919, Appearing in the midst of the
Great War, it proved to be more deadly than any other disease since the visitations of the Black
Death in the fourteenth century, and it killed more people than would any other single event of
the twentieth century except World War II. (Kent ,1) As if the world wasnt experiencing
enough tragedy with the war now this was killing its young and otherwise healthy population. As
Jennifer Larson points out in her article, What Made the Spanish Flu So Deadly, she states,
What made this flu different from all other flus was a dramatically higher fatality rate, plus the
fact that while ordinary flus claimed casualties among the very young and the very old, this virus
was especially deadly to young adults between the ages of 20 and 40. (Latson) Also what made
it different was that it wasnt a localized outbreak but a worldwide one.
When panic first struck, people looked for the source. As Molly Billings states in her
article, The Influenza Pandemic of 1918, Some of the allies thought of the epidemic as a

biological warfare tool of the Germans. Many thought it was a result of the trench warfare, the
use of mustard gases and the generated "smoke and fumes" of the war. (Billings) It is easy to
understand why people would think this. World War 1 was different than any other war anyone
had seen, so it was natural to blame the enemy. They soon realized that this was not a man-made
problem.
Still, this devastating influenza left the medical community and scientists with more
questions than answers. It would take decades before they had more understanding. As Latson
states,
Why was Spanish flu so fatal, especially to people in the prime of their lives, is what scientists
are striving to understand, as TIME reported in the wake of Hong Kongs 1997
avian flu outbreak. It was during that outbreak that a pathologist named Johan Hultin collected an
intact, long-frozen sample of the Spanish flu virus from a mass grave in a tiny Alaska town called
Brevig Mission, where 85 percent of the population had been felled by the flu in a single week.
Research on that sample has shown that one-way Spanish flu worked was by overstimulating the
immune system and turning it against its owner so having a strong immune system to begin
with may have been a disadvantage. (Latson)

Researchers still study this disease today to better understand it and how to prevent such
a catastrophe again. Dr. Robert Webster of St. Jude Childrens Research hospital proposes that,
before it can infect a person, it has to be humanized ---that is, to change in a way that would
allow it to keep the birdlike features that make it so infectious and allow it to grow in the lungs
of a human being. (Kolata 223) He goes on to say that pigs are what could bridge that gap.
Kennedy Shortridge of the University of Hong Kong adds to this, The central fact about
influenza pandemics, Shortage emphasized, is that every one that has ever been traced to its
origin began in Chinas Guangdong Province, formerly called Canton, which is in the south, next

to Hong Kong. (Kolata 286) Shortage goes on to conclude his hypothesis with the fact that the
flu did not have as deadly an effect on the people of southern China. It would seem that if this
strain had been around the people would have had a certain immunity to it. Also, it was the
Chinese who dug the trenches in WWI which could be one of the ways it was introduced to the
soldiers. (Kolata) Shortage goes on to suggest that, the 1918 virus gradually changed over
perhaps a fifty-year period from a bird flu to one that could infect humans. (Kolata 297)
Jeffrey Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist has also done extensive studies and his
hypothesis differs from Shortridge. He agrees with Shortridge that the virus had been circulating
well before the outbreak in 1918, but thinks it was strictly a bird flu. They have isolated the virus
but still are trying to understand how it was so lethal. It seems that the healthier the people were,
the more likely they were to die from it. According to Kolata, Scientist have captured the mass
murderer, the 1918 flu virus. But they still do not know its murder weapon. (Kolata)
The Spanish Flu seems to have been the perfect storm of virus particles that was
particularly deadly to the healthiest of the population. The search continues to isolate what
exactly caused this virus to more or less turn off the victims immune system and reek its havoc.
Could this happen again? Scientists believe that it could and are continuing to search for the
culprit to be able to fight it, if, and when it does.

Bibliography
Billings, Molly. "The Influenza Pandemic of 1918." 2005. virus.stanford.edu. Web. 12
April 2016.
Kent, Susan Kingsley. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 A Brief History with
Documents. Boston : Bedford/St.Martin's, 2013. Print.
Kolata, Gina. Flu the Story of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the search
for the virus that casued it. New York: Touchstone, 1999. Print.
Latson, Jennifer. "What Made The Spanish Flu So Deadly?" Time.com 2015.
Database.
USDHHS. "The Great Pandemic The United States in 1918-1919." n.d. United States
Department of Health and Human Services. Web
http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/the_pandemic/fightinginfluenza/. 5
May 2016.