The Plague of the Spanish Lady (original) (raw)
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The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19
The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19 was the worst pandemic of modern times, claiming over 30 million lives around the globe in less than six months. In the hardest hit societies, everything else was put aside in a bid to cope with its ravages. It left millions orphaned and medical science desperate to find its cause. Despite the magnitude of its impact, few scholarly attempts have been made to examine this calamity in its many-sided complexity. This book begins this process on a global, multidisciplinary scale, seeking to apply the insights of a wide range of social and medical sciences to an investigation of the pandemic. Topics covered include the historiography of the pandemic, its virology, the enormous demographic impact, the medical and governmental responses it elicited, and its long-term effects, particularly the recent attempts to identify the precise causative virus from specimens taken from flu victims in 1918, or victims buried in the Arctic permafrost at that time. With a range of contributions that span the globe and an extensive bibliography of relevant works, this book will be essential reading for students and academics interested in the history and sociology of illness and medicine. Howard Phillips, South African by birth, studied at the University of Cape Town and London University before joining the staff of the History Department at UCT in 1974. Since completing his doctoral thesis on the impact of the Spanish flu pandemic on South Africa (which was published in 1990), he has researched, taught and written on the medical history of South Africa. In 1998, together with David Killingray, he organised the first international conference on the influenza pandemic of 1918-19.
Origins of the Spanish Influenza pandemic (1918-1920) and its relation to the First World War
Journal of Molecular and Genetic Medicine, 2009
The virus which was responsible for the first benign wave of the Spanish Influenza in the spring of 1918, and which was to become extremely virulent by the end of the summer of 1918, was inextricably associated with the soldiers who fought during the First World War. The millions of young men who occupied the military camps and trenches were the substrate on which the influenza virus developed and expanded. Many factors contributed to it, such as: the mixing on French soil of soldiers and workers from the five continents, the very poor quality of life of the soldiers, agglomeration, stress, fear, war gasses used for the first time in history in a massive and indiscriminate manner, life exposed to the elements, cold weather, humidity and contact with birds, pigs and other animals, both wild and domestic. Today, this combination of circumstances is not present and so it seems unlikely that new pandemics, such as those associated with the avian influenza or swine influenza, will emerge with the virulence which characterized the Spanish Influenza during the autumn of 1918.
The so-called Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918–19 claimed between 50 million and 100 million lives around the globe in less than six months. This book is the first international account of the disease to be published since the 1920s. It is the culmination of the proceedings of an international and interdisciplinary Conference concerning the pandemic, held in Cape Town, South Africa in 1998. Although several of the papers have already been published in journals, the book presents a coherent synthesis of 16 of the 36 papers presented in Cape Town.
The 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
Microbiology Australia, 2020
Towards the end of world war one, the world faced a pandemic, caused not by smallpox or bubonic plague, but by an influenza A virus. The 1918–19 influenza pandemic was possibly the worst single natural disaster of all time, infecting an estimated 500 million people, or one third of the world population and killing between 20 and 100 million people in just over one year. The impact of the virus may have influenced the outcome of the first world war and killed more people than the war itself. The pandemic resulted in global economic disruption. It was a stimulus to establishment of local vaccine production in Australia. Those cities that removed public health restrictions too early experienced a second wave of infections. Unfortunately, it seems that the lessons of infection control and epidemic preparedness must be relearnt in every generation and for each new epidemic.
A Chronicle of the Pandemic: Hugh Gibson’s Notes on the “Spanish Flu” of 1918
Studia Historica Gedanensia
A Chronicle of the Pandemic: Hugh Gibson’s Notes on the “Spanish Flu” of 1918 Hugh Gibson (1883–1954) was a young American diplomat who had a knack for landing in the thick of the action. During the pandemic of 1918, he found himself in Paris tasked with advising General John Pershing on diplomatic matters, straightening out the morass of American propaganda in Europe, and collaborating with military intelligence. To this was added the role of official US liaison to the Polish and Czech national committees. His multiple tasks were carried out against the backdrop of the dramatic last six months of the Great War. The Armistice of November 1918 arrived on the heels of the deadly second wave of the “Spanish Flu”. Gibson then turned his attention from military matters to humanitarian aid for all of Europe as diplomatic adviser to Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration. Throughout the tumultuous year from spring 1918 to spring 1919, Gibson experienced the Spanish Flu from multip...
Epiphany, 2022
Modernist literature had a strong potential for representation and embodiment. It vividly conveyed the reality of the two world wars and the views of the individuals who lived through them. However, there remained one missing chain in all of that representation: the pandemic. The impact of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic on humans was greater than that of the two world wars combined. Yet, it was not highlighted by authors back then and was only briefly and indirectly represented due to its invisibility, unlike war. In later times, pandemic writing had slightly flourished and new works directly reflected the pandemic, such as Kevin Kerr's Unity (1918). The play seems to mimic our contemporary experience under COVID-19, although it portrays the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. This means that the play shows many similarities and parallels to our life under the pandemic of today, as it demonstrates the similarities between the Spanish flu and COVID-19. This paper reveals part of the causes concealed behind the literary silence of the flu pandemic of 1918. Moreover, it provides a brief comparison between the pandemic in Unity (1918) and the pandemic of today asserting the significance of literary representation of these events.