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Apr 15, 2024 · Influenza pandemic of 1918–19, the most severe influenza outbreak of the 20th century and among the most devastating pandemics in human history. The outbreak was caused by influenza type A subtype H1N1 virus. Learn about the origins, spread, and impact of the influenza pandemic of 1918–19.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- What Is The Flu?
- Flu Season
- Spanish Flu Symptoms
- What Caused The Spanish Flu?
- Why Was The Spanish Flu called The Spanish Flu?
- Where Did The Spanish Flu Come from?
- Fighting The Spanish Flu
- Aspirin Poisoning and The Flu
- The Flu Takes Heavy Toll on Society
- How U.S. Cities Tried to Stop The 1918 Flu Pandemic
Influenza, or flu, is a virus that attacks the respiratory system. The flu virus is highly contagious: When an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks, respiratory droplets are generated and transmitted into the air, and can then can be inhaled by anyone nearby. Additionally, a person who touches something with the virus on it and then touches his...
In the United States, “flu season” generally runs from late fall into spring. In a typical year, more than 200,000 Americans are hospitalized for flu-related complications, and over the past three decades, there have been some 3,000 to 49,000 flu-related U.S. deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Young childr...
The first wave of the 1918 pandemic occurred in the spring and was generally mild. The sick, who experienced such typical flu symptoms as chills, fever and fatigue, usually recovered after several days, and the number of reported deaths was low. However, a second, highly contagious wave of influenza appeared with a vengeance in the fall of that sam...
It’s unknown exactly where the particular strain of influenza that caused the pandemic came from; however, the 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, America and areas of Asia before spreading to almost every other part of the planet within a matter of months. Despite the fact that the 1918 flu wasn’t isolated to one place, it became known around t...
The Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain, though news coverage of it did. During World War I, Spain was a neutral country with free media that covered the outbreak from the start, first reporting on it in Madrid in late May of 1918. Meanwhile, Allied countries and the Central Powers had wartime censors who covered up news of the flu to keep moral...
Scientists still do not know for sure where the Spanish Flu originated, though theories point to France, China, Britain, or the United States, where the first known casewas reported at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas, on March 11, 1918. Some believe infected soldiers spread the disease to other military camps across the country, then brought it ...
When the 1918 flu hit, doctors and scientists were unsure what caused it or how to treat it. Unlike today, there were no effective vaccines or antivirals, drugs that treat the flu. (The first licensed flu vaccine appeared in America in the 1940s. By the following decade, vaccine manufacturers could routinely produce vaccines that would help control...
With no cure for the flu, many doctors prescribed medication that they felt would alleviate symptoms… including aspirin, which had been trademarked by Bayer in 1899—a patent that expired in 1917, meaning new companies were able to produce the drug during the Spanish Flu epidemic. Before the spike in deaths attributed to the Spanish Flu in 1918, the...
The flu took a heavy human toll, wiping out entire families and leaving countless widows and orphans in its wake. Funeral parlors were overwhelmed and bodies piled up. Many people had to dig graves for their own family members. The flu was also detrimental to the economy. In the United States, businesses were forced to shut down because so many emp...
A devastating second wave of the Spanish Flu hit American shores in the summer of 1918, as returning soldiers infected with the disease spread it to the general population—especially in densely-crowded cities. Without a vaccine or approved treatment plan, it fell to local mayors and healthy officials to improvise plans to safeguard the safety of th...
The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919.
The impact of the pandemic on the United States is sobering to contemplate: Some 670,000 Americans died. In 1918, medicine had barely become modern; some scientists still believed “miasma ...
The 1918 pandemic virus initiated a pandemic era still ongoing. The descendants of the 1918 virus remain today as annually circulating and evolving influenza viruses causing significant mortality each year.
- Jeffery K Taubenberger, David M Morens
- 10.1101/cshperspect.a038695
- 2020
- 2020/10
The earliest pre-pandemic cases identified in May–August 1918, however, had pandemic HA sequences identical to those seen during the pandemic peaks in late 1918 and in 1919 . These early H1 HAs shared pathogenic properties with H1 HAs found in wild waterfowl influenza A viruses, making hypotheses of evolving viral pathogenesis problematic.
When the first cases of the influenza A (H1N1) pandemic broke out in 1918 during the final year of World War I, the origins of this deadly pandemic were unknown. Contemporary explanations in the Allied nations ranged from fears of a new form of biological warfare to a by-product of trench warfare resulting from the use of mustard gas. The ...
