april 5th 1918. on city street corners across the country people pick up the paper on their way
to work every major headline is about world war one but meanwhile in doctor's offices and public
health agencies a different kind of report has just arrived the report is called simply public
health reports the u.s public health service puts it out every week it helps doctors and hospitals
stay up to date on the diseases circulating in the country and tucked away in the middle
there's the mention of a mysterious flu quote on march 30 1918 the occurrence of 18 cases
of influenza of severe type from which three deaths resulted was reported in haskell kansas
no one knows it yet but this flu that killed three people in kansas will go on to become a pandemic
the influenza outbreak of 1918 was the most deadly pandemic in modern history killing an estimated
50 to 100 million people worldwide it was the second most deadly outbreak of all time the
first was the plague in the 1300s how in a time before widespread global travel did the influenza
of 1918 spread so far so fast hi it's jeremy brown dr jeremy brown is an emergency doctor he treated
people during the swine flu outbreak of 2009 he's written a book about the history of influenza and
he's now the director of the office of emergency care research at the national institutes of health
we caught dr brown to ask him about the influenza outbreak of 1918 and he said before we get to any
of that let's talk vocab so first what is an epidemic it's a disease that seems to have more
cases than usual in a local region or community now this doesn't in any way reference how deadly
the disease is and the same goes for the term pandemic a pandemic is when that increase in cases
of a disease spreads worldwide the influenza outbreak of 1918 was definitely a pandemic
and separately it was a deadly one this influenza was a novel disease new to humans
we know today that the 1918 influenza virus began as a bird virus and then hopped over into humans
but we're still not sure exactly where it started spreading in humans
it could have been at a british army camp in france or it might have started in china in the
summer of 1918 but many medical historians believe that the virus began in the u.s in rural kansas
a place called haskell county a farming community in haskell county in one day 18 people fell ill
and three died that episode was curious enough and remarkable enough to prompt a physician called dr
lauring miner who was a rural doctor in kansas prompt him to write a report to health officials
this is the report that lands on the desks of doctors and public health workers on april
5th 1918. the public health reports that one line about a weird flu he was clearly surprised at the
large number of deaths in one day in the large number of cases in one day we do not know any
other details about the outbreak in haskell county but we do know that about 300 miles to the east of
haskell county was the u.s army's camp fundston in 1918 america was fighting in world war one
and there are reports of soldiers from camp funsden going back and forth to haskell county
and then in early march the first soldier at camp funston reports a flu army bases
unfortunately were a hotbed for contagion we know from pictures of the hospitals at the time
that even patients who were sick were generally put into large gym-like rooms where there were
tens or even hundreds of people in one small area separated perhaps by just a cotton sheet
the disease they got looked a lot like a standard flu chills and a fever the vast number of people
who got it recovered normally with breast and fluids but what was different about the
influenza then was that in a small number of cases it attacked the lungs directly causing patients to
have difficulty breathing and we have many many reports of eyewitnesses who saw young men come
in in the morning and be dead in the afternoon as they became increasingly blue which is a symptom
that there is not enough oxygen in the blood and they simply often expired within a few hours
this flu is unusual because it kills otherwise healthy young men as soldiers moved freely between
the camp the army camp other army camps and the civilian world the virus expanded outwards
in waves cases started popping up in other countries following the path of troop deployment
but people aren't dying in huge numbers not yet and then summer hits and the virus seems to just
go away on its own viruses don't do well in hot weather but some people are still carrying it
around inside their bodies and then the fall comes temperatures drop and those remaining
strains flare right back up a second wave hits this one will kill tens of millions of people
the disease pops up at an army camp outside boston camp devon about 14 000 soldiers get sick 750
die we have a remarkable letter from a young medical orderly whose name was roy he wrote
the following quote we eat it live it sleep it and dream it to say nothing of breathing it
16 hours a day it beats any sight they ever had in france after a battle and then
again the virus spreads from one army base to hundreds of bases worldwide
and to the cities and civilians around them london africa it would spread to india it was
everywhere and it struck with the ferocity that even to this day is hard for us to really imagine
people are dying and this new threat is coming on top of the war it's the tail end of world war one
and now to be hit with this invisible enemy that was not on the battlefronts of europe but it was
in our very homes wherever we were and these countries at war they don't want to report how
many people and how many soldiers are dying of flu they worry it'll make them look weak
they're downplaying it except in one country spain they're neutral in world war one so they don't
have to cover this up they're reporting the real numbers of people infected now people mistakenly
suggested that because the disease was reported in spain that it had originated there it certainly
had not people started calling it the spanish flu it wasn't accurate but it's stuck now because
most countries weren't reporting cases global containment measures at first were virtually
non-existent 40 000 people had already died in the u.s over a three-month period and the first
thing that the doctors admitted they said we have no idea what's causing this pandemic some people
suggested that it was the alignment of saturn and jupiter that the planets influenced us here on
earth and gave us the flu so that's in fact where we get the word influenza from it comes from the
italian influentia influential meaning influence so doctors had no idea what was causing the
pandemic and they also had no idea how to treat it they generally prescribed laxatives at the time
they prescribed alcohol the chief medical officer of the united kingdom at the time suggested that
everybody should have a sip of champagne and that will help them to overcome the flu that was the
state of medicine back in 1918 this disease did not end because of medical intervention
but by 1919 one year after that first outbreak in haskell kansas the spread finally subsides
for a few reasons number one those who caught it and recovered were now immune to it number
two the people who had died from the disease were now out of the pool so the vulnerable population
had already died and the third and probably the most important reason was because influenza is a
winter disease and as the spring of 1919 came the disease prevalence just melted away fortunately
it didn't come back in that winter of 1919 all told 675 000 people died in the us
that is more than the total number of american soldiers who died in all the
wars of the 20th century combined worldwide the flu killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people
but don't underestimate the gains we've made in the past 100 years
we have antibiotics today a lot of people who died in 1918 died from secondary infections that
are now preventable we have modern intensive care units and specialists and we do have some weapons
to fight the spread of disease that were around in 1918 and are still around today keep your distance
wash your hands and wear a mask seriously people wear a mask thanks for watching the
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