Influenza Epidemic 1918 Philadelphia

[CHIOSSO]

The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 in Philadelphia

I had a little bird.
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window, And in-flu-enza.

Children's Rhyme 1918

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"Please, Let Me Put Him in a Macaroni Box"

The Spanish Influenza of 1918 in Philadelphia

Louise Apuchase: We were the only family saved from the influenza. The rest of the neighbors all were sick. Now I remember so well, very well, directly across the street from us, a boy about 7, 8 years old died and they used to just pick you up and wrap you up in a sheet and put you in a patrol wagon. So the mother and father screaming. Let me get a macaroni box. Before, macaroni, any kind of pasta used to come in these wooden boxes about this long and that high, that 20 lbs. of macaroni fitted in the box. Please, please, let me put him in the macaroni box. Let me put him in the box. Don’t take him away like that. And that was it. My mother had given birth to my youngest sister at the time and then, thank God, you know, we survived. But they were taking people out left and right. And the undertaker would pile them up and put them in the patrol wagons and take them away.

Pennsylvania Closes All Meeting Places

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Pennsylvania Closes All Meeting Places
october 3, 1918

Schools, churches,theatres and all places of public assemblage were today ordered closed indefinitely.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive...DE&oref=slogin
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City of Philadelphia had the most deaths:



In America, the City of Philadelphia had the most deaths: out of a population of almost 2 million, almost 13,000 people died in the influenza epidemic. Over 11,000 of those deaths occurred in October 1918.

In July 1918 Philadelphia's Bureau of Public Health had issued a bulletin about the "Spanish Influenza". But health officials had not listed influenza as a reportable disease, and this denial of the danger of what was happening had encouraged people to take foolish risks. So it was that on 28 September 1918 a "4th Liberty Loan Drive" parade in Philadelphia was attended by 200,000 people. Since influenza is a respiratory illness spread by breathing, within days of the parade 635 new cases of influenza were reported; and on 6 October, 289 people died. Then city officials had to recognize that an epidemic was occurring, and they ordered all public gathering places, including churches, schools and theaters, closed. Despite these precautions, by mid-October hundreds of thousands of people were infected, and by the third week of October 1918, over 4,500 were dead. Since a large proportion of the city's doctors and nurses were in Europe to support U.S. involvement in the war there, many people in Philadelphia may have died because they did not get proper medical attention. And yet, although in October open trucks (death carts) had been sent out to collect corpses from wooden boxes on front porches (and abandoned corpses from gutters), by early November life began to return to normal. The end of the epidemic was celebrated along with the European Armistice on 11 November 1918.

The Influenza Pneumonia Pandemic of 1918
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"Spanish Lady"

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It was the end of the summer in 1918 in Philadelphia, a city of a million and a half people.
World War I, "the war to end all wars," was drawing to a close as the British crossed the Hindenburg Line. At the University of Pennsylvania, drilling, uniforms, and war courses were the order of the day for 2,240 students of draft age who had been inducted into the Students' Army Training Corps (SATC), a federal program designed to prepare young men as officers. Penn's dormitories and fraternity houses served as barracks. By order of Major Charles T. Griffith, the officer in charge of the program, the University's daily newspaper, The Pennsylvanian, had been placed under military authority and served as the official bulletin of the SATC.


In Philadelphia, it was business as usual. People were flocking to the long-running British musical Chu Chin Chow at the Shubert Theater, Jerome Kern's Leave It to Jane at the Chestnut Street Opera House, and John Philip Sousa's Liberty Loan concert at Willow Grove Park. Everyone was sure it was just a matter of time until "the boys came home." No one was paying much attention to the account of an unusual sickness reported earlier in the year by a Spanish wire service to Reuter's London headquarters: "A strange form of disease of epidemic character has appeared in Madrid."
Within a short time, eight million Spaniards were ill with what was to be named the "Spanish influenza." Fueled by troop movements, it spread like wildfire across Europe, the Mideast, and Asia. By the summer of 1918, the "Spanish Lady" had reached American soil. In 120 days, more than half of the world's population would fall victim to the influenza pandemic, and nearly 22 million would die of complications.
The disease began with a cough, then increasing pain behind the eyes and ears. Body temperature, heart rate, and respiration escalated rapidly. In the worst cases, pneumonia quickly followed. The two diseases inflamed and irritated the lungs until they filled with liquid, suffocating the patients and causing their bodies to turn a cyanotic blue-black.
In Pennsylvania, the influenza epidemic began almost unnoticed in the middle of September. First a few cases, and then the numbers began to rise rapidly. Worried state health authorities decided to add influenza to the list of reportable diseases. Their concern increased when 75,000 cases were reported statewide. The worst was still ahead.
Philadelphia was about to become the American city with the highest death toll in one of the three worst epidemics in recorded history.
Philadelphia newspapers and The Pennsylvanian chronicled the passage of the "Spanish Lady" day-by-day through city and campus.

The Pennsylvania Gazette: The Flu of 1918
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Philadelphia, Nurses, and the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918

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On 10 October, 528 died in the city. Thirty-fourth street, in front of Philadelphia General hospital, was crowded with vehicles of every description bringing the sick, the dying, and, in most cases, the dead to the hospital. The scene was repeating itself in front of every hospital in the city. Many of the staff of PGH were sick because this was a disease of necessity (meaning care was provided for the symptoms, not the cure), the majority of work fell to nurses. PGH School of Nursing's chief nurse, Lillian Clayton, worked 48-hour shifts. Sheer exhaustion allowed many of the nurses to become ill; four died. Miss Clayton offered to allow all preliminary (freshman) nursing students to return home rather than face the disease, yet all volunteered to stay. Six eventually died from flu.

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/...hil%201918.htm

Influenza in 1918: Recollections of the Epidemic in Philadelphia

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Influenza in 1918: Recollections of the Epidemic in Philadelphia
Isaac Starr, MD

18 July 2006 | Volume 145 Issue 2


When the great influenza epidemic struck Philadelphia in 1918, the author was just starting his third year at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. After a single lecture on influenza, classes for the third and fourth year students were suspended while he and his mates manned an emergency hospital, in which they worked under little or no medical supervision and in the presence of an alarming patient mortality. This essay describes what happened in the hospital, and in the city as a whole, during the pandemic. Certain features of the clinical course of most patients permit the hope that modern therapy will prevent a repetition of the horrendous mortality.

Influenza in 1918: Recollections of the Epidemic in Philadelphia -- Starr 145 (2): 138 -- Annals of Internal Medicine

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Philadelphia was staggered.

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Philadelphia was staggered. The early record of 289 deaths in one day was easily surpassed. On October 10, while firemen hosed down the streets all day and people faithfully wore their face masks outside, 528 Philadelphians perished from influenza. The fury of this mortality rate can perhaps be better imagined in terms of 528 Philadelphians dying in a single day in traffic accidents or in a fire rather than, prosaically, in bed.

All places of public assembly in the city were closed, and Philadelphia began to resemble the London described by an English official during the great bubonic plague of 250 years before: ”… the streete thin of people, the shops shut up, and all in mournful silence, as not knowing whose turne might be next.” Even the death carts of London’s Great Plague were recalled in Philadelphia. The Reverend Dr. Joseph Corrigan, director of Catholic Charities, assembled a convoy of six horse-drawn wagons and a truck that scoured the city’s back streets and alleyways in search of abandoned victims. Forcing open doors in cheap tenements and rundown rooming houses, the priest and his helpers gathered up some 200 bodies in twenty-four hours. They deposited their grim harvest in a morgue built to accommodate 36 dead, where conditions soon became so offensive that veteran embalmers recoiled and refused to enter.

Responding to this kind of congestion, the J. F. Brill Company, Philadelphia streetcar manufacturers, temporarily turned its woodworking shop over to the construction of coffins to ease the shortage.

Joseph E. Persico
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To deal with the problem of hundreds of unburied corpses, volunteers drive horse-drawn carts through the city streets, calling people to bring out the dead. Wagonloads of bodies, each tagged for identification, are buried at Potter's Field at Second and Luzerne Streets, where the Bureau of Highways is digging trenches for graves. Only the promise that bodies can be reinterred when the epidemic abates persuades grieving relatives to give up their loved ones to the "dead wagons."

Horse-drawn carts plied the streets with a call to bring out the dead in the city where bodies lay unburied for days. The afflicted died by the thousands, and survivors lived in fear. But this wasn’t medieval Europe being stalked by the Black Death. This was Philadelphia, October 1918, and the city was under siege from a new variant of one of mankind’s oldest specters: influenza

Epidemics Arrival in Philadelphia Could Not Have Been Worse

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City Snapshots: Philadelphia


The timing of the epidemics arrival in Philadelphia could not have been worse. Over one-quarter of the city's doctors, and a larger portion of its nurses, were lending their medical talents to the nation's war efforts. At Philadelphia Hospital, fully 75% of medical and support staff were overseas. Such personnel shortages were an issue even before influenza had hit; once it did, lack of adequate medical help became a matter of life or death.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influen.../philadel.html

Public Health Service

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In Philadelphia, Dr. Wilmer Krusen, Director of the Department of Health and Charities warned against fright or panic. On October 3rd city officials closed all schools, churches, theaters and places of amusement. As the situation worsened, an emergency telephone switchboard was established at Strawbridge and Clothier Department Store, one of the city's largest stores. Firemen, garbage collectors, policemen, and city administrators all fell ill. The city’s only morgue overflowed. Designed to handle thirty-six bodies, it had over five hundred. Stacked in the hallways of the morgue, bodies rotted. To ease the pressure on the city's morgue, convicts were ordered to dig graves. But even this failed to solve the problem, and desperate city officials opened five supplementary morgues.

Selma Epp, who was a child during the pandemic, remembered that her family made up their own remedies, like castor oil [and] laxatives...everyone in our house grew weaker and weaker. Then my brother Daniel died. My aunt saw the horse-drawn wagon coming down the street. The strongest person in our family carried Daniel’s body to the sidewalk. Everyone was too weak to protest. There were no coffins in the wagon, just bodies piled on top of each other. Daniel was two; he was just a little boy. They put his body on the wagon and took him away.”

Harriet Ferrel, another Philadephian, remembered how she, her father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, and cousin were all ill with influenza. The only healthy member of the family was her mother who nursed them all. Ferrel's life was in danger: Our family doctor...told my mother she didn’t need to feed me anymore, because I wasn’t going to live. He said if I did live, I would be blind. Ferrel recovered.

The Office of the Public Health Service Historian

. : The Great Pandemic : : The United States in 1918-1919 : .


Cheerful Things

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Philadelphia, October 4: 636 new cases, 139 deaths.

Worried Philadelphians, wearing gauze influenza masks over their noses and mouths, quickly cross to the other side of the street if a passerby chances to cough or sneeze.
Weeping women in West Manayunk block the car of Dr. Joseph Schlotterer, who is making a house call, and permit him to leave only after he treats 57 neighborhood children.
Frantic shoppers strip pharmacy shelves bare. The press of customers is so great that the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Temple University suspend classes so that pharmacy students can help fill prescriptions. Most are for whiskey, which, now that saloons are closed, is available only in drugstores.

Rather than wait to become a statistic, people turn to home remedies:

goose-grease poultices, sulfur fumes, onion syrup, chloride of lime.

Snake-oil artists hawk their useless potions in newspaper ads:

Use Oil of Hyomei. Bathe your breathing organs with antiseptic balsam.

Munyon's Paw Paw Pills for influenza insurance.

Sick with influenza? Use Ely's Cream Balm. No more snuffling. No struggling for breath.


Philadelphia, October 6: 788 new cases, 171 deaths.

The Philadelphia Inquirer Derides The Closing of Public Places:

What are the authorities trying to do? Scare everyone to death? What is to be gained by shutting up well-ventilated churches and theaters and letting people press into trolley cars?

What then should a man do to prevent panic and fear? Live a clean life. Do not even discuss influenza... Worry is useless. Talk of cheerful things instead of disease.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: The Flu of 1918 (2/4)

Symptoms Spanish Flu

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Spanish influenza was a more severe version of your typical flu, with the usual sore throat, headaches and fever.

However, in many patients, the disease quickly progressed to something much worse than the sniffles. Extreme chills and fatigue were often accompanied by fluid in the lungs. One doctor treating the infected described a grim scene: "The faces wear a bluish cast; a cough brings up the blood-stained sputum. In the morning, the dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like cord-wood."

If the flu passed the stage of being a minor inconvenience, the patient was usually doomed. There is no cure for the influenza virus, even today. All doctors could do was try to make the patients comfortable, which was a good trick since their lungs filled with fluid and they were wracked with unbearable coughing. The "bluish cast" of victims' faces eventually turned brown or purple and their feet turned black. The lucky ones simply drowned in their own lungs. The unlucky ones developed bacterial pneumonia as an agonizing secondary infection. Since antibiotics hadn't been invented yet, this too was essentially untreatable. The pandemic came and went like a flash. Between the speed of the outbreak and military censorship of the news during World War I, hardly anyone in the United States knew that a quarter of the nation's population -- and a billion people worldwide -- had been infected with the deadly disease. More than half a million died in the U.S. alone; worldwide, the estimates ran as high as 50 million.
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Peter F, Svider

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A great PDF about the epidemic by Peter F, Svider

http://dspace.nitle.org/bitstream/10...Svider%202.pdf.
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Peter F, Svider

Deaths In Camden 615,

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The Philadelphia Inquirer, Saturday, October 19, 1918:


DEATHS IN CAMDEN 615, TOTAL OF CASES 6990

Deaths from pneumonia in Camden yesterday reached 615 and the total number of influenza cases reported thus far is 6990. With a view of keeping the epidemic from gaining a fresh foothold, Dr. H. H. DAVIS, president of the Board of Health, yesterday urged convalescents to use every care in seeing that there is no spreading of the germs still lurking in their system. A Camden nurse yesterday gave her life in the battle against the disease. She was Mrs. Catherine BOLING, a member of the staff at Cooper Hospital. She was a graduate of the Methodist Hospital, Philadelphia, and was a native of Bethlehem, Pa. Another notable death yesterday was that of Rev. Walter ELLIS, nephew of Mayor ELLIS, and pastor of the M. E. Church at Westmont.

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My grandmother told me of bodies stacked on the corner of Eighth and Catherine St waiting for the trucks to come by with the men shouting "BRING OUT YOUR DEAD".

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[CHIOSSO]

And yet, although in October open trucks (death carts) had been sent out to collect corpses from wooden boxes on front porches (and abandoned corpses from gutters), by early November life began to return to normal. The end of the epidemic was celebrated along with the European Armistice on 11 November 1918

[CHIOSSO]

As a child I remember old men telling me of taking fruit carts from 9th st. and loading the dead from their families on them. Then they pushed them by hand to Holy Cross were they themselves had to burry them. Because their was no one else to do it. My grand mother told me she saw a stack of bodies on the corner of 8th and Christian St.

[Litter Box]

My grandfather and my father's brother died of flu in that time frame. There is no one left to ask but the probability is interesting.

[Colin P. Varga]

"I look upon the services rendered by the Archbishop and the nuns as one of the most potent aids in making the headway we have toward getting control of the epidemic."
Thomas B. Smith, Mayor of Philadelphia

Welcome to the PAHRC!

This is from a photo album of a student at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary who helped bury the dead during the epidemic.

[CHIOSSO]

Colin nice to see you here I look forward to your posts.

[Colin P. Varga]

Colin nice to see you here I look forward to your posts.

Oh, thanks. I waited to join here because when I first looked at this blog it seemed like it was a lot of complaining about PB.com. I got better things to complain about. However, now things are moving forward.

[CHIOSSO]

Just thought I would bump this up in light of recent events.

[ArcticSplash]

Scary.

The high school in San Antonio where two boys were found with the swine flu was very close to where I used to live for years.



My parents already ran to the Wal-Mart Supercenter to fill up their deep freeze and fill up the pantry in case it spreads and they shut the city down or they stop allowing people to go in or out of the city if more cases pop up.

My dad still works in the city and there's already talk about contingency plans of making all the employees work from home and suspending all travel within San Antonio.

[CHIOSSO]

Using lung tissue taken 79 years earlier during the autopsy of a U.S. Army private who died of the 1918 flu, scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology analyze the 1918 virus and conclude that it is a unique virus but is related to the "swine flu." According to one researcher: "The hemagglutinin gene matches closest to swine influenza viruses, showing that this virus came into humans from pigs."
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[CHIOSSO]

Twoop > Health and Medicine > Pandemics
1918 Spanish Flu Timeline
March 11, 1918: An Army private at Fort Riley, Kansas reports to the camp hospital complaining of fever, sore throat, and headache. Before the day is over, over 100 soldiers fall sick.

July 1918: Public health officials in Philadelphia issue a warning about what they call the "Spanish influenza".

Aug. 27, 1918: Sailors stationed aboard the Receiving Ship at Commonwealth Pier in Boston begin reporting to the sick bay with cold symptoms.

Aug. 30, 1918: At least 60 sailors aboard the Receiving Ship fall sick.

September 1918: Dr. Victor Vaughn, acting Surgeon General of the Army, receives urgent orders to proceed to Camp Devens near Boston. Once there, what Vaughn sees stuns him: "I saw hundreds of young stalwart men in uniform coming into the wards of the hospital. Every bed was full, yet others crowded in. The faces wore a bluish cast; a cough brought up the blood-stained sputum. In the morning, the dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like cordwood." That day, 63 men die of influenza.

Sept. 5, 1918: The Massachusetts Department of Health informs local newspapers that they are dealing with an epidemic. A doctor with the Massachusetts State Health Department says, "unless precautions are taken the disease in all probability will spread to the civilian population of the city."

Sept. 24, 1918: Edward Wagner, newly transplanted from Chicago, falls ill with the flu. This flies in the face of San Francisco public health officials who had played down the threat of the flu to the public.

Sept. 28, 1918: 200,000 gather for a 4th Liberty Loan Drive in Philadelphia. Days after the parade, 635 new cases of influenza were reported. Within days, the city will be forced to admit that epidemic conditions exist. Churches, schools, and theaters are ordered closed, along with all other places of "public amusement."

Oct. 2, 1918: By the point, the death toll in Boston is 202. The Liberty Bond parades are cancelled as well as all sporting events. The stock market goes on half-days.

Oct. 3, 1918: The epidemic reaches Seattle, Washington, with 700 cases and one death at the University of Washington Naval Training Station.

Oct. 6, 1918: Philadelphia records 289 influenza-related deaths in a single day.

Oct. 7, 1918: New Mexico, which had remained largely untouched by the influenza, reports its first case.

Oct. 11, 1918: Santa Fe, New Mexico reports its first flu-related death.

Mid-Oct.: In a single day, 851 New Yorkers die. The death rate in Philly for the period of a single week is 700 times the average. The Chicago crime rate drops 43 percent.

Oct. 19, 1918: In Philadelphia, Dr. C.Y. White announces he has developed a preventative vaccine. More than 10,000 complete series of inoculations are sent to the Philadelphia Board of Health.

Oct. 29, 1918: Six-ply gauze masks become mandatory in Seattle.

Oct. 30, 1918: Six-ply gauze masks become mandatory in the entire state of Washington.

Oct. 31 1918: Because of the Influenza Pandemic that grips the nation, most Halloween celebrations are cancelled due to quarantines. One Illinois paper reports: "The ghost parties, masquerades and dances which have always been so popular at this time of the year, are as scarce as the corn and eggs, not because of Mr. Hoover, but because of Mr. Influenza. Many parties which have been planned for Friday and Saturday night have been postponed as the quarantine will not be lifted before next Monday. But not all of the Halloween spirit has been killed by the influenza. Crowds of boys and girls have been using ticktacks on the windows, tearing down gates and and beating the porches with planks , for the last three nights, and they are all prepared to be out tonight, so be not surprised if you hear mysterious noise tonight."

End of October: October 1918 ends up being the deadliest month in the history of the United States, with 195,000 Americans succumbing to the influenza.

Nov. 3, 1918: The News of the World prints some suggested flu precautions: "Wash inside nose with soap and water each night and morning; force yourself to sneeze night and morning, then breathe deeply; do not wear a muffler; take sharp walks regularly and walk home from work; eat plenty of porridge."

Nov. 11, 1918: Armistice is announced and World War I comes to an end. Though much of the joy is weighed down by the epidemic, people around the world venture out into the streets for the first time in order to celebrate. Many go out without their masks for the first time, leading to a surge in influenza cases in many cities for weeks after the Armistice.

Nov. 18, 1918: By this date, 5,000 have died in New Mexico.

Celebrating the end of World War I, 30,000 San Franciscans take to the streets to celebrate. There was much dancing and singing. Everybody wore a face mask.

Nov. 21, 1918: Sirens sound in San Francisco announcing that it is safe for everyone to remove their face masks.

Dec. 1918: 5,000 new cases of influenza are reported in San Francisco.

Jan. 1919: Schools reopen in Seattle.

March 1919: This is the first month that no influenza deaths are reported in Seattle.

1927: It is estimated that 21.5 million people died during the 1918 epidemic.

1991: Revising the 1927 estimate that 21.5 million people died during the 1918 epidemic, researches recalculate the numbers at 30 million.



1997: Using lung tissue taken 79 years earlier during the autopsy of a U.S. Army private who died of the 1918 flu, scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology analyze the 1918 virus and conclude that it is a unique virus but is related to the "swine flu." According to one researcher: "The hemagglutinin gene matches closest to swine influenza viruses, showing that this virus came into humans from pigs." (Science, March 21, 1997)


2002: The Bulletin of the History of Medicine reports that the estimate of the numbers dead from the 1918 epidemic has again been revised. The newest estimate is that between 50 million and 100 million died.


Feb. 6, 2004: Researchers working separately at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California and at Britain's Medical Research Council discover that the 1918 virus may have jumped directly from birds to humans rather than going from birds to pigs and then infecting humans. They say it explains why the 1918 strain was so deadly, since human immune systems aren't prepared for viruses coming directly from birds.


Oct. 2005: Using a technique called reverse genetics, scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology recreate the 1918 virus. They recovered the genome information from a flu victim who had been buried in Alaskan permafrost since 1918.

[CHIOSSO]

FLU stops fights in Philly

http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/histp...cles/oct5b.JPG

another good site about the 1918 flu

http://www.vortex.is/sigrun/America.html

[CHIOSSO]

Posted on Mon, Jul. 13, 2009

Study: 1918 flu survivors seem immune to swine flu

SETH BORENSTEIN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The way swine flu multiplies in the respiratory system is more severe than ordinary winter flu, a new study in animals finds.

Tests in monkeys, mice and ferrets show that the swine flu thrives in greater numbers all over the respiratory system, including the lungs, and causes lesions, instead of staying in the nose and throat like seasonal flu.

In addition, blood tests show that many people who were born before the 1918 flu pandemic seem to have immunity to the current swine flu, but not to the seasonal flu that hits every year.

The research by a top University of Wisconsin flu researcher was released Monday and will be published in the journal Nature.

Study: 1918 flu survivors seem immune to swine flu | AP | 07/13/2009

[CHIOSSO]

A separate study published yesterday suggests that the culprit in history's deadliest flu pandemic, in 1918, might not have made a sudden, direct jump from birds to people, as many scientists believe.

The genetic ancestor hunt shows pieces of the 1918 killer virus were quietly circulating in people and pigs up to 15 years before the pandemic erupted. That argues for better surveillance of percolating flu strains, not just in the long term but right now. "We need to be vigilant for any genetic mixing of strains currently circulating in humans," lead researcher Dr. Gavin J. D. Smith of the University of Hong Kong said in an e-mail interview.

The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first evidence that the 1918 pandemic - like the next two, in 1957 and 1968 - evolved from a series of reassortments, not a sudden jump

Swine flu 'more severe' | Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/14/2009

[SouthStMan]

thanks for bumping this up - it was a good read!

my Nana was just 10 when this hit Philly - and she spent her time delivering food to quarantined houses in the Frankford section of the city, where she grew up. The thinking at the time was that children had a stronger immune system to fight off the strain - all she was given was a cloth mask to wear on her face - and paid ten cents a house.

That experience created the inspiration for her to become a nurse - which she did; becoming a head nurse at Pennsylvania Hospital in the late 1920s and 1930s (til she was swept off her feet by a young doctor - got married and settled down - haha!)

Anyway - she was full of stories of Philadelphia in the early 20th century ... she lived a long life, passing just last year at the strong age of 101.

Thanks for sharing the thread!

- Robert

[CHIOSSO]

H1N1 traced to 1918 pandemic Behind the Headlines
Brought to you by the NHS Knowledge Service
Categories

Tuesday July 21 2009



According to the authors of the report, the Spanish flu's H1N1 virus, which caused tens of millions of deaths in 1918, was also transmitted from humans to pigs during the pandemic. Tracing the lineage of the virus in this research shows that it continues to evolve in both humans and pigs 90 years later.[/COLOR]

All human-adapted influenza A viruses "are descendants, direct or indirect, of that founding virus" says Jeffrey Taubenberger, a co-author of the report and a senior investigator at the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US.

All current human flu is linked to the 1918 pandemic strain, scientists claim

[CHIOSSO]

Swine flu could hit up to 40 percent in US

By MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writer

ATLANTA (AP) -- In a disturbing new projection, health officials say up to 40 percent of Americans could get swine flu this year and next and several hundred thousand could die without a successful vaccine campaign and other measures.
The estimates are based on a flu pandemic from 1957, which killed nearly 70,000 in the United States but was not as severe as the infamous Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. The number of deaths and illnesses from the new swine flu virus would drop if the pandemic peters out or if efforts to slow its spread are successful, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

KYW Newsradio 1060

[ArcticSplash]

Right now Britain is seeing infections go up at a staggering rate.

NHS can barely keep up with it. Luckily this strain has a moderate morbidity rate when infections are treated early.

[CHIOSSO]

Philadelphia Public Ledger Death Notices (24 Oct 1918); Philadelphia Co., PA

Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Carol Boyd <Cb242@aol.com>

THE Spanish flu of 1981 check out these Death Notices of the time. See how many died from influenza and pneumonia.

http://files.usgwarchives.org/pa/phi...pl10241918.txt