The Great Influenza of 1918
|
I had a little bird. Its name was Enza. Children's Rhyme |
In 1918-19, a terrible outbreak of influenza occurred, which traversed the globe and killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide. The Great Influenza of 1918 or Great Pandemic began its extremely lethal Second Wave from the Port of Boston.
The United States mobilized for World War I during 1917. Encampments were quickly set up throughout the country, supported by a limited number of hospitals, doctors, and nurses. Fighting men from east and west, north and south, farm and city with varying immunity to diseases were placed together in tight quarters in these training camps. A wave of influenza had occurred in early 1918, which became more virulent on a trip from the United States to France and then back to the United States.
|
|
It started on August 27th 1918 at Commonwealth Pier in Boston, Massachusetts. Sailors fell ill and were sent to the local Chelsea Naval Hospital at Chelsea, Massachusetts. At about the same time, ships departed for Philadelphia and New Orleans, transmitting the deadly virus. The flu also quickly spread to nearby Camp Devens in central Massachusetts, devastating the population of soldiers there. At the height of the epidemic at Devens, about 100 soldiers were dying per day. |
|
Commonwealth Pier Boston |
In September 1918, the constant transfer of troops spread the deadly disease throughout the United States, and then to many parts of the globe. The civilian population was also quickly infected with the flu because of large public mobilization parades, and then later victory parades.
Influenza epidemics had occurred before in world history, but this swarm was more deadly than any other until then. The virus attacked the lungs, with the human body's own immune system destroying them in a large percent of deaths. The impact of this pandemic was unprecedented. In some military hospitals, toe tags and sheets were placed with flu patients, as to make the process of re-filling the beds more efficient for the next.
In greater Boston, about 1,000 people died during the pandemic. In October 1918 alone, about 195,000 Americans died of influenza and its complications. Tens of millions were struck down worldwide. Great lessons were learned by public health officials-from not mixing diverse populations to effective quarantine procedures-which have greatly reduced the likelihood of a flu outbreak of this scale ever again. Due to the quick spreading of the disease, many family members would be found dead in their homes, sometimes with one sick child.
Serum developed at Chelsea Naval Hospital
During the last days of August 1918, Navy physician J.J. Keegan, stationed at the Chelsea Naval Hospital overlooking the waters of Boston Bay, began to hear rumors of an unusual epidemic taking form just across the bay at Commonwealth Pier. Keegan had expected a slow August, stationed as he was far from the European battlefields of the Great War. He had expected to find himself treating the occasional sunburn or sour stomach as thousands of inductees--strapping young men in the prime of life--passed through Boston en route to taking on the Germans across the sea. But as news spread about an illness sweeping through the large, noisy sailors' barracks known as the Receiving Ship, Keegan considered how to fight a silent enemy just making its presence felt on US shores.
Little did Keegan know that the influenza he was seeing was actually making its second appearance in the US. It had likely originated at Fort Riley, Kansas, the previous spring and accompanied unknowing troops across the Atlantic.
|
|
Now, the sailors filling the wards of Chelsea Naval Hospital quickly overwhelmed the resources of medical professionals. The men Keegan saw were suffering from no common flu--a nuisance ailment resulting in sniffles, aches, a low fever, and a few days of bed rest. Rather, the sailors coming into Keegan's wards, many displaying a bluish complexion with purple blisters, had been leveled by hoarse, hacking breaths, barely supplying enough oxygen to keep them alive. As confounded as doctors were about this ailment, they were certain of one fact--this was no ordinary flu, and the number of its victims was growing. Within just two weeks of its first appearance, two thousand officers and men of the First Naval District had contracted influenza. |
|
Ward scene at Chelsea Naval Hospital |
As bracing as these numbers were, more shocking to medical professionals was what was found within the bodies of the dead: lungs soaked with a bloody, foamy fluid that seeped out from beneath the physician's scalpel. What the fluid contained, what caused it to drown the lungs, remained a perplexing mystery.
City officials in Boston were caught off guard when three civilians dropped dead of influenza in early September. The epidemic had now moved beyond the confines of the military and into the general population. A "Win The War for Freedom" parade that marched through the streets of Boston featured 4000 men, including 1000 sailors from Commonwealth Pier and 200 civilian Navy and shipyard workers. This rousing display of patriotism did little to end the war, and much to spread the deadly flu. Doctor John Hancock of the Massachusetts Department of Health, sensing that perhaps the genie was already out of the bottle, issued a statement warning that "unless precautions are taken the disease in all probability will spread to the civilian population of the city."
For young Dr. Keegan, these were deeply troubling days. Not only was he forced to stand helpless as legions died before his eyes, he had to live with the knowledge that he was exposing himself to their fate just by remaining within their airspace. Additionally, Keegan and his colleagues began to question some of the assumptions they had made about the science of infectious disease.
|
|
Theirs was the age of modern medicine; an age when scientists at last had a grasp of how disease was caused and transmitted, and more importantly, how it might be prevented and cured. Keegan and his colleagues now found themselves chagrined, yet exhilarated, by the challenge before them. As they dove into research and experimentation, the flu continued to cut a deadly path along the Atlantic seaboard. Reports poured in of cases appearing at naval bases from Rhode Island to Florida. As September 1918 drew to a close, Boston had lost more than 1000 citizens to the silent, relentless killer. The deadly influenza now posed a threat to the entire nation, and the world at large. |
|
Chelsea Naval Hospital Laboratory |
A treatment was soon developed and used successfully in a long series of cases at the naval hospital at Chelsea, outside Boston, and first hand information based on interviews with the physicians who originated and used the method was later brought to the medical commission by Dr. Herman N. Bundesen, who was sent east by Health Commissioner John Dill Robertson.
The treatment consisted of the injection of a serum extracted from the blood of persons who have recovered from the influenza-pneumonia.
The onset of illness for those battling the flu of 1918 was quite sudden. In a matter of mere hours, a person could go from strapping good health to being so enfeebled they could not walk. Victims complained of general weakness and severe aches in their muscles, backs, joints, and heads. Often enduring fevers that could reach 105 degrees, the sick fell prey to wild bouts of delirium. Innocent objects--pieces of furniture, wallpaper, lamps--would adopt wicked manifestations in the minds of those consumed by fever. When the fevers finally broke, many victims fortunate enough to have survived now endured crushing post-influenzal depression.
Victims
This flu was a great leveler of men; it recognized neither social order nor economic status. It struck with impunity among the rich and famous, as well as the lowly and the meek. Among its more well-known victims: Silent screen star Harold Lockwood, swimmer Harry Elionsky, "Admiral Dot," one of PT Barnum's first midgets, Irmy Cody Garlow, the daughter of Buffalo Bill Cody, General John Pershing, Franklin Roosevelt, actress Mary Pickford, and President Woodrow Wilson.
|
The following individuals were recognized for their efforts in developing the influenza serum at the Chelsea Naval Hospital in 1919. |
|
MCGUIRE, LEE W. Citation: The Navy Cross is presented to Lee W. McGuire, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy, for distinguished service in the line of his profession while serving at the U. S. Naval Hospital, Chelsea, Mass., in developing a convalescent influenza-pneumonia serum, which has proved of very great value in reducing mortality from 38 to 4 per cent, and for general service at the hospital. |
|
BROOKE, ELSIE While Serving as Chief Nurse at the US Naval Hospital, Chelsea, Mass., she exhibited highly commendable devotion to duty in attending to the sick, particularly during the influenza epidemic in the fall of 1918. |
|
REDDEN, WILLIAM R. Citation: The Navy Cross is presented to William R. Redden, Lieutenant (MC), U.S. Navy, for distinguished service in the line of his profession while serving at the U.S. Naval Hospital, Chelsea, Mass., in developing a convalescent influenza-pneumonia serum, which has proven of very great value in reducing mortality from 38 to 4 per cent, and for general service at the hospital. |