Scientists have exhumed and pieced together the remains of the virus that caused the worst flu pandemic on record. They've found the Spanish flu of 1918 is disturbingly similar to the avian flu currently passing among birds in Asia. This new virus, like its predecessor, has made the jump from birds to humans, and health officials predict it too could start a pandemic. The 1918 outbreak hit with devasting effect and the details of how it spread are helping to shape preparations for this latest threat. NHPR's Kerry Grens looks back at what happened nearly nine decades ago in New Hampshire.
The Spanish flu of nineteen eighteen killed between twenty and fifty million people worldwide.
Of course, this was before medicine and public health practices were as sophisticated as they are today.
Still, the flu devastated entire towns.
And in the fall of that year, in the disease’s second wave, Boston was the American center of the flu’s attention.
Kathy Kirkland, an infectious disease doctor at Dartmouth Hitchcock, says it killed with frightening speed.
Kirkland: It became more and more virulent gradually to the point where by the time it resurfaced in the Boston area in September it was I think very high attack rates very contagious and in some places killing ten to twenty percent of the people affected.
The flu traveled around the country with soldiers who were training for deployment to Europe for World War I and those coming home from the fighting.
But it jumped quickly to civilians.
On September thirteenth the Union Leader’s predecessor—the Union—reported a case in Nashua, on the fourteenth, Portsmouth, and on the seventeenth, Manchester.
Kirkland says the science of the time didn’t know what it was up against.
Kirkland: A lot of people thought it was due to a bacterial infection. Some people thought it was the plague because it was so devastating.
And because no one knew exactly what it was, and because it hit so fast, there was no vaccine.
Health officials published influenza hints, like ‘scrub floors a little oftener than usual’ and ‘don’t spit on the sidewalks.’
Despite its spread, officials were confident the flu was under control.
The Union reported on September nineteenth ‘A warning against public hysteria…
...A warning against public hysteria was issued tonight by Dr William C. Woodward, health commissioner of Boston. He said that fear would lower the vitality of those exposed to influenza. He added that the rain storm of today undoubtedly would result in a large death list tomorrow, but that there need be no cause for alarm as the health authorities had the situation well in hand.
But the situation in New Hampshire would worsen for two more weeks.
Hotels turned into hospitals, schools closed, and public gatherings were forbidden.
Under front page banners that proclaimed the triumphs of the war, the Union newspaper catalogued the casualties of flu.
...The influenza situation in Concord remains practically unchanged. Many new cases are reported daily, but it is believed the number of recoveries offset the new ones. The city is practically closed up tight, except for the stores on main st. Soda and ice cream are taboo in the drug stores but there continues a brisk trade in cough and cold remedies. All meeting have been called off, most of these scheduled having been voluntarily abandoned before the orders issued yesterday afternoon by the city board of health. The emergency hospital in the old Elks home was opened this afternoon and five patients were moved in immediately with others in prospect. Mayor French was in charge of the installation of the beds and improved hospital equipment, and assisted personally in the arrangement of things...
Daily newspapers reported calls for nurses and new regulations that forbade church services and limited the number of mourners at funerals.
At Dartmouth College flu raged through the dormitories and the gym served as a makeshift hospital.
A letter from student Clifford Orr dated September twenty seventh, nineteen eighteen tells of his recovery from the disease:
Dear Father:-- You needn’t worry any more, because I’m all right now. The doctor let me go to classes today, and I am feeling almost as well as usual. I still am feeling pretty stuffed up, but coming fine. I surely was lucky not to have been worse. Some fellows who were taken sick before I was are still in bed, and liable to be for some time. I was only in bed from Monday afternoon to Thursday noon, while several right in the same dorm have been there a week. One freshman has died, and I don’t know how many soldiers. Chapel has been cut out, the movies closed, and Dartmouth Night which was to be held next Monday to celebrate the college’s 150th birthday has been cancelled. I was going to ask you to try your hardest to be here and see the fun, but nothing is going to happen. The epidemic has killed what little college life there was. I have not been examined yet and shall not be until I stop coughing and sneezing, and can see and hear better. The doctors have been so busy with the “influence†as it is called here (influenza) that not much examining has been done. There are only about eight doctors in town and it takes some time to care for one hundred cases in the hospital, one hundred twenty five in the Gym, and probably one hundred fifty in the different dorms. I understand, however, that the exam is strict and that only fifty percent are passing. This may be only rumor, for I don’t know anyone yet who has been turned down.
By mid October the flu was its most greedy—claiming at least a dozen lives each day in New Hampshire.
On days that the death toll was down by one, the Union would report that the epidemic was waning, only to have the optimism snuffed by a new flurry of fatalities.
But by October twenty fifth—with as much mystery and speed as it entered the state—the flu was on its way out of New Hampshire.
The Union newspaper reported that the flu had run out of steam.
...Monday of the coming week will see the closing ban on amusements lifted. Schools will reopen and all theatres and moving picture houses, soda fountains, and ice cream parlors will resume business. Fruit stores that have made a practice of opening on Sundays prior to the epidemic can re-open this coming Sunday for the sale of fruit only. Church services on week days may be resumed. Business meetings, lectures, lodge and social meetings can be held as well as political rallies. The reading room of the city library also will open. Pool, and billiard rooms, as well as bowling alleys and coffee houses will be permitted to reopen.
According to records at the Department of Commerce, two thousand people in New Hampshire died of flu in nineteen eighteen—compared to just one hundred forty five the year before.
Many also died of pneumonia that developed from the flu.
In all, over six hundred thousand Americans died from the Spanish flu—six times as many as died in World War One.
Dr. Kirkland says it’s uncertain whether the next pandemic will be as severe.
Vaccines, antivirals, and education could put a big dent in the flu’s might.
What is certain, she says, is that the next pandemic is not an if, but a when.
SOQ
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