Please note that some of the links referenced throughout this work may no longer be active.
INTRODUCTION
“It was impossible to estimate”: Mrs. Nichols, “Report of the Expedition,” July 21, 1919, National Archives, in John M. Barry, The Great Influenza, pp. 360–361.
an estimated 675,000 Americans: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, p. 206.
more Americans died from the flu: Kolata, Flu, p. x.
the Spanish flu killed as many Americans: “Statistics Overview: HIV Surveillance,” HIV Surveillance Report: Diagnoses of HIV Infection in the United States and Dependent Areas, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Updated May 18, 2017), cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/overview/index.html.
The Black Death killed: “The Five Deadliest Outbreaks and Pandemics in History,” Culture of Health Blog, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, December 16, 2013, rwjf.org/en/culture-of-health/2013/12/the_five_deadliesto.html.
one person in twenty alive in 1918: Barry Youngerman, Pandemics and Global Health, p. 96.
“Children lost fathers”: Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, p. xxvi.
“The flu was expunged from newspapers”: Kolata, Flu, p. 53.
“The average college graduate”: Alfred Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, pp. 314–315.
the Naples Soldier: Niall Johnson, Britain and the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic: A Dark Epilogue (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 160.
The Russians called it: Szymon Słomczyński, “There are sick people everywhere,” rdsg-ihpan.edu.pl/images/RDSGpdfy/2012/RDSG_2012_05-Slomczynski.pdf.
Soldiers fighting in the Great War: Kolata, Flu, p. 11.
The word is thought to come from: Kolata, p. 6.
CHAPTER ONE
I gather that the epidemic of grippe: Harvey Cushing, From a Surgeon’s Journal 1915–1918 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1936), p. 389, quoted in Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 171.
Convincing his mother to sign: Neal Gabler, Walt Disney, p. 37.
But active service: Jean Edward Smith, FDR, pp. 158–159.
“Why … entangle our peace”: George Washington, “Farewell Address (1796),” Avalon Project, Yale Law School, avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp. Accessed July 8, 2017.
“the organization and mobilization”: Woodrow Wilson, “Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War Against Germany,” April 2, 1917, Presidential Speeches, Miller Center, millercenter.org/the-presidency.
“military boomtowns of tents and barracks”: Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States from 1607 to 2012 (New York: Free Press, 2012), p. 355.
in the morning of March 4: Kolata, Flu, p. 10.
The medical officer who examined him: M. Honingsbaum, Living with Enza, pp. 42–43.
But they are mostly spread: “How Flu Spreads,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm.
“It starts at the back of the throat”: Jason Socrates Bardi, “The Gross Science of a Cough and Sneeze,” Live Science, June 14, 2009, livescience.com/3686-gross-science-cough-sneeze.html.
“knock-me-down fever”: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, p. 19.
“Today such news”: Crosby, p. 19
In the midst of a war: Collier, The Plague of the Spanish Lady, p. 8.
“I gather that the epidemic of grippe”: Cushing quoted in Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 171.
Half a million of General Ludendorff’s soldiers: Crosby, p. 26
the British army optimistically declared that the epidemic was over: Barry, p. 182.
CHAPTER TWO
It is horrible: Roy to Burt, September 29, 1918, in N. R. Grist, “Pandemic Influenza 1918,” British Medical Journal, no. 6205 (1979), in Kolata, Flu, p. 14. bmj.com/content/bmj/2/6205/1632.full.pdf.
In the morning the dead bodies: Victor C. Vaughan, A Doctor’s Memories (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926), p. 384, quoted in Barry, p. 190. archive.org/details/doctorsmemories013852mbp.
“They looked larger than ordinary men”: Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, pp. 420–421.
“They very rapidly develop”: Roy to Burt, September 29, 1918, in Kolata, Flu, p. 14.
“A considerable number of American negroes”: “Epidemic Guard for Port,” New York Times, August 19, 1918, quoted in Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 182.
A STRANGE FORM OF DISEASE: Richard Collier, The Plague of the Spanish Lady, p. 7.
Millions had fallen ill: Collier, p. 11.
some men were transferred to the U.S. Naval Hospital: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, p. 39.
“Fevers ran from 101°”: Crosby, p. 39.
front pages of newspapers: John F. Kelly, “Autumn 1918: Washington’s Season of Death,” Washington Post, February 1, 2004.
rumors of German treachery: Kolata, Flu, p. 4.
the Spanish flu had struck: Kolata, p. 15.
“They are placed on the cots”: Vaughan, A Doctor’s Memories, pp. 383–384, in Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 189.
Built by the largest labor force: “History,” Fort Devens Museum, fortdevensmuseum.org.
“In the morning the dead bodies”: Vaughan, p. 384, in Barry, p. 190, archive.org/details/doctorsmemories013852mbp.
“This must be some new kind of infection”: Rufus Cole to Simon Flexner, May 26, 1936, Influenza Encyclopedia, University of Michigan Library, hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.1570flu.0015.751. Accessed July 9, 2017.
fifty thousand people in Massachusetts: Kolata, Flu, p. 18.
“New men will almost surely contract the disease”: Charles Richard to Army Adjutant General, September 25, 1918, quoted in Barry, p. 302. history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwi/1918flu/History/sanitationUSCh16.htm.
“The deaths at Camp Devens”: Charles Richard to Army Chief of Staff, September 26, 1918, quoted in Barry, p. 302. history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwi/1918flu/History/sanitationUSCh16.htm.
“I was on duty at Great Lakes”: Jay McAuliffe, “James H. Wallace,” War Stories, Pandemic Influenza Storybook, April 9, 2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cdc.gov/publications/panflu/.
“Each incident”: Kolata, Flu, p. 18
CHAPTER THREE
IF YOU MUST KISS: “If You Must Kiss, Kiss Via Kerchief, Is Warning,” The New York Sun, August 17, 1918. chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030431/1918-08-17/ed-1/seq-12/. Accessed July 9, 2017.
On St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan’s East Village: Youngerman, Pandemics and Global Health, p. xi. Barry Youngerman is Rose’s nephew.
So did a German immigrant: Lawrence Downes, “Donald Trump: An American Tale,” Taking Note (blog), New York Times, June 30, 2015, takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/.
He later returned to New York: Gwenda Blair, The Trumps, pp. 116–117.
According to Salvation Army tradition: “The History of Donut Day,” The Salvation Army Metropolitan Division. centralusa.salvationarmy.org/metro/donutdayhistory/. Accessed July 9, 2017.
The nickname “doughboy”: Michael E. Hanlon, “The Origins of Doughboy,” worldwar1.com/dbc/origindb.htm. Accessed July 9, 2017.
During America’s two years of preparation: Millet, Maslowski, and Feis, For the Common Defense, p. 352.
A volunteer group called: Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 124.
The health commissioner advised: New York Sun, August 17, 1918, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030431/1918-08-17/ed-1/seq-12/. Accessed July 9, 2017.
When twenty-five people: “City Is Not in Danger from Spanish Grip,” New York Times, September 13, 2017. Accessed July 9, 2017.
“They’re as blue as huckleberries”: Collier, p. 39.
more than twenty thousand deaths in New York City: Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook, p. 43. Also “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York City: A Review of the Public Health Reports,” Public Health Reports 2010, US National Library of Medicine, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862336/. Accessed July 9, 2017.
The “filthy habit”—spitting in public—was made illegal: “Drastic Steps Taken to Fight Influenza Here,” New York Times, October 5, 1918, quoted in Francesco Aimone, “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York City: A Review of the Public Health Response,” Public Health Reports 125, suppl. 3 (2010): p. 71–79, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862336/.
“New York is a great cosmopolitan city”: “Drastic Steps Taken,” quoted in Aimone, “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York.”
“It got to the place where I would only see patients twice”: Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (New York: Penguin, 2010), p. 44.
New York would see more than thirty thousand deaths: Annual Report of Department of Health of the City of New York, 1918 (New York: William Bratler, 1919), quoted in Aimone, “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York.”
No person shall appear: Bradford Luckingham, Epidemic in the Southwest (El Paso, Texas: Texas Western Press, 1984), p. 34, quoted in Kolata, p. 23.
“Fifty-one Mexican men”: Kolata, Flu, p. 25.
In Alliance, Nebraska, the Red Cloud family: Vanessa Short Bull, “Sadie Afraid of His Horses–Janis,” Finding a Cure, Pandemic Influenza Storybook, April 9, 2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cdc.gov/publications/panflu/.
“His secret weapon”: Margarita Pancake, “Elmer ‘Bud’ Pancake,” Finding a Cure, Pandemic Influenza Storybook, April 9, 2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cdc.gov/publications/panflu/.
“If it was difficult to control crowding”: Carol R. Byerly, “The U.S. Military and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919,” Public Health Reports, U.S. National Library of Medicine 2010, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/.
“Influenza exists in epidemic form”: John Pershing to Army Adjutant General, cable no. 1744, October 3, 1918, quoted in Kolata, Flu, p. 51.
Army Provost Marshal General: Kolata, Flu, p. 18.
“The transports became floating caskets”: Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 306.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I wish those people”: Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 395.
“Louder and louder grew the sound”: Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars, p. 110.
“We are insensible, dead men”: Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p. 87.
“It was the largest mass movement”: Hochschild, To End All Wars, p. 94.
The war was principally declared: Hochschild, p. 75.
“You will be home”: Hochschild, p. 102.
“We had bonded together”: Jünger, Storm of Steel, p. 5.
“In a single day”: Russell Freedman, The War to End All Wars, p. 35.
“Opposite was the Church of St. Pierre”: Richard Harding Davis, “Horrors of Louvain Told by Eyewitness; Circled Burning City,” New York Tribune, August 31, 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.
“Germany’s resources were simply insufficient”: Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914, p. 284.
“They were mowed down”: Freedman, p. 42.
“Even today”: Hochschild, p. 81.
“Were I to advise”: Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1921), p. 233, in Erik Larson, Dead Wake, p. 329.
CHAPTER FIVE
The sound of artillery: Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars, p. 317.
Paris also came under bombardment: Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars, p. 320.
“Because diseases have been the biggest killers”: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, p. 197.
Leading the commission: “History of the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba,” University of Virginia Health System. exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/yellowfever/u-s-occupation-cuba/. Accessed July 10, 2017.
Without telling his colleagues: John R. Pierce, “James Lazear and Self-Experimentation,” Roundtable Discussion on Yellow Fever, September 13, 2005, The Great Fever, American Experience, pbs.org/wgbh//amex/fever/sfeature/.
In his final delirium: David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas, p. 414.
“Of all the silly and nonsensical”: Washington Post editorial, November 2, 1900, in Jim Murphy, An American Plague, p. 132.
pneumonia triggers the immune system: “Pneumonia: Overview,” Mayo Clinic, mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pneumonia/home/ovc-20204676.
“an extraordinarily complex, intricate”: Barry, The Great Influenza, p.107.
“We lost lots of them”: Lori Woodson, “Pandemic,” Manhattan Mercury, March 1, 1998, www2.okstate.edu/ww1hist/flu.html.
“Most everybody over the country”: Santa Fe Monitor, February 21, 1918, in Barry, p. 95.
“as suddenly as if they had been shot”: Barry, p. 93.
Although it is not certain: Barry, p. 169.
“The timing of the Funston explosion”: Barry, p. 97.
Public Health Service doctors: Kolata, Flu, p. 10.
When the United States entered the war: Barry, p. 139.
When the war began, there were 403 women: “Military Nurses in World War I,” Women in Military Service to America Memorial Foundation, chnm.gmu.edu/courses/rr/s01/cw/students/leeann/historyandcollections/history/lrnmrewwinurses.html.
At the end of May: Edwin O. Jordan, Epidemic Influenza (Chicago: American Medical Association, 1927), pp. 78–79, quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/f/flu/8580flu.0016.858/40/. Accessed July 10, 2017.
In June, three thousand men: Collier, The Plague of the Spanish Lady, p. 8.
The king’s doctor said: Collier, p. 20.
Paul Ehrlich discovered: Barry, p. 146.
“It had only gone underground”: Barry, p. 175.
CHAPTER SIX
“Obey the laws”: Molly J. Billings, “The Public Health Response,” The Influenza Pandemic of 1918, June 1997, virus.stanford.edu/uda/fluresponse.html.
fifty base hospitals: John Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 129.
According to Red Cross records … overseas: “Work in the United States,” in A Statement of Finances and Accomplishments for the Period July 1, 1917 to February 28, 1919 (Washington, D.C.: American Red Cross, 1919), on Medical Front WWI, vlib.us/medical/.
“Your country needs every penny”: “United States Government War-Savings Stamps: What They Are and Why You Should Buy Them,” Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917, p. 3.
Some athletes, including Olympic marathoners: Esther Inglis-Arkell, “Rat Poison Strychnine Was an Early Performance-Enhancing Drug,” June 11, 2013, Gizmodo iO9, io9.gizmodo.com/why-strychnine-was-an-early-performance-enhancing-drug-512532345.
“Miraculously, it worked”: Joan Givner, Katherine Anne Porter: A Life, p. 126.
She had lost all her hair: Joan Givner, Katherine Anne Porter: A Life, p. 130.
“The two men slid off the desk, leaving”: Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, p. 184.
Four Minute Men: Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda, p. 94.
original movies: Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda, p. 93.
“utter, print, write or publish any disloyal”: Sedition Act, May 16, 1918, United States Statutes at Large 40 (April 1917–March 1919), p. 553, loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/65th-congress/c65.pdf.
“I am Public Opinion”: Liberty Bond poster described in Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 127.
“Wilson hated to see the loss”: A. Scott Berg, Wilson, p. 456.
Berlin, Iowa, changed its name to Lincoln: Berg, Wilson, p. 456.
“American brewers”: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, p. 46.
“They would do this for several hours a day”: Paul Kendall, “Dr. Frank Biberstein,” Plantings, Pandemic Influenza Storybook, April 9, 2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cdc.gov/publications/panflu/.
Also filling the void was Philadelphia’s: James F. Armstrong, “Philadelphia, Nurses, and the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918,” Navy Medicine 92, no. 2 (March–April 2001): p. 16–20, history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/i/influenza/philadelphia-nurses-and-the-spanish-influenza-pandemic-of-1918.html.
“Visiting nurses often walked into”: Crosby, p. 76.
“when no hospital beds were to be had”: Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (San Diego: Harcourt, 1957), p. 35.
“We were beaten all the time”: McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, p. 64.
The health commissioner of New York estimated: Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 391.
“For Lillian Kancianich”: Lillian Kancianich, interview, August 8, 2003, in Nancy K. Bristow, “‘It’s as Bad as Anything Can Be’: Patients, Identity, and the Influenza Pandemic,” Public Health Reports 125, suppl. 3 (2010): p, 134–144, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862342/.
“If influenza could have been smothered”: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, p. 49.
“Racism and legalized segregation”: Vanessa Northington Gamble, “‘There Wasn’t a Lot of Comforts in Those Days’: African Americans, Public Health, and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic,” Public Health Reports 125, suppl. 3 (2010): p. 114–122, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862340/.
In Philadelphia, there were two black hospitals: Gamble, “‘There Wasn’t a Lot of Comforts in Those Days,’” 2010.
“The influenza epidemic did”: Gamble, “‘There Wasn’t a Lot of Comforts in Those Days,’” 2010.
In Philadelphia, some undertakers raised their prices: Crosby, p. 77.
The delay in burying the unembalmed dead: “Influenza 1918,” American Experience, PBS, pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/influenza-philadelphia/.
“Wagonloads of bodies, some dead over a week”: Armstrong, “Philadelphia, Nurses, and the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918,” 2011.
“The outside of a face mask is marked”: “Sweeping Order Against Influenza in Effect Here Today,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, November 6, 1918, quoted in Miles Ott et al, “Lessons Learned from the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota,” Public Heath Reports 122, no. 6 (November–December 2007): p. 803–81, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997248/.
“I personally prefer to take my chances”: “Influenza Lid to Go on City Today,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, November 4, 1918, quoted in Miles Ott et al, “Lessons Learned from the 1918–1919,” 2007.
“Obey the laws”: Billings, “The Public Health Response,” 1997.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sick with influenza? Use Ely’s Cream Balm: Lynch, “The Flu of 1918,” 1998.
“No medicine and none of the vaccines”: Barry, The Great Influenza, pp. 358–359.
“Men and women stopped as suddenly as if stabbed”: Collier, The Plague of the Spanish Lady, p. 57.
“The scourge had struck at five continents”: Collier, p. 81.
“Although he didn’t drink himself”: Martha Wrigley, “Clarence and Isabelle Ross,” War Stories, Pandemic Influenza Storybook, April 9, 2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cdc.gov/publications/panflu/.
“My dad came down with the flu”: David A. Thompson, “Arne Thompson,” War Stories, Pandemic Influenza Storybook, April 9, 2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cdc.gov/publications/panflu/.
Frantic shoppers strip pharmacy shelves bare: Lynch, “The Flu of 1918,” 1998.
“Quacks and naysayers”: Julian A Navarro, “Influenza in 1918: An Epidemic in Images,” Public Health Reports 2010, U.S. National Library of Medicine, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862330/.
“tried everything, everything they could think of”: Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 358.
“Prisoners were thought to be the ideal study subjects”: Kolata, Flu, p. 57.
“maybe those Boston sailors”: Kolata, p. 59.
“The victims of the epidemic fell on either side”: Ernest W. Gibson, “History of the First Vermont and 57th Pioneer Infantry” (address, Montpelier, Vermont, October 23, 1919), quoted in A. Scott Berg, ed., World War I and America, pp. 590–592.
The conditions during this night: Henry A. May, “The Influenza Epidemic,” History of the U.S.S. Leviathan (New York, 1919), pp. 160–163, archive.org/details/historyofusslevi00broo.
Army hospital authorities removed nearly one thousand: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, pp. 134–135.
“Following a week on the front line”: Jünger, Storm of Steel, p. 263.
“Several hundred thousand soldiers”: Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars, p. 333.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Normally corpses [in India] were cremated”: Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 365.
“The attack was very sudden”: Grayson to Tumulty, April 10, 1919.
In February 1919: Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, p. 176.
When Wilson took ill in April: John Milton Cooper Jr., Woodrow Wilson, p. 487.
“markedly showing the effects”: Cooper, p. 488.
“The whole of civilization”: Cary T. Grayson to Samuel Ross, April 14, 1919, in Michael Alison Chandler, “A President’s Illness Kept Under Wraps,” Washington Post, February 3, 2007, washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/02/AR2007020201698_2.html.
“In half-starving Germany”: Hochschild, To End All Wars, p. 350.
“Cold, hungry, and ragged”: Collier, The Plague of the Spanish Lady, p. 135.
“Prince Max was luckier”: Collier, p. 137.
More than ten million soldiers died on the battlefields of Europe: Following statistics are cited in Berg, Wilson, p. 505.
“Ho Chi Minh—and Vietnam”: Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, p. 59.
“We shall have to fight”: Freedman, The War to End All Wars, p. 157.
“He was not physically or mentally”: Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, p. 491.
The resulting treaty: John Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 385.
“pathetic, broken Wilson”: Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, p. 182.
“In April 1919”: Berg, Wilson, p. 570.
“We could but surmise”: Irwin H. Hoover, Forty-Two Years in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), p. 98, quoted in Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 385.
“It is of course impossible to say what Wilson would have done”: Barry, p. 387.
“Health officials realized”: Julian A. Navarro, “Influenza in 1918: An Epidemic in Images,” Public Health Reports, 2010, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862330/.
“Influenza was the likely killer”: Hochschild, To End All Wars, p. 350.
In the Fiji Islands: Barry, p. 364.
In March 1919 professional hockey’s championship: Adam Gretz, “Remembering when the NHL canceled the Stanley Cup Final due to Flu Pandemic,” CBS Sports.com, December 22, 2014, cbssports.com/nhl/news/remembering-when-the-nhl-canceled-the-1919-cup-final-due-to-flu-pandemic/.
“The virus burned through the available fuel”: Barry, p. 370.
CHAPTER NINE
Epidemics create a kind of history from below: Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map, p. 32.
Hultin later hit on the idea: Kolata, Flu, p. 98.
“This was a great adventure”: Elizabeth Fernandez, “The Virus detective,” SF Gate, February 17, 2002, sfgate.com/magazine/article/The-Virus-detective-Dr-John-Hultin-has-found-2872017.php.
“It took two days to reach the first body”: Ned Rozell, “Villager’s Remains Lead to 1918 Flu Breakthrough,” November 20, 2014, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/villager-s-remains-lead-1918-flu-breakthrough.
“In 1951, I was a graduate student”: Hultin’s account of his time in Brevig in 1951 appears in Kolata, pp. 106–113.
“It was like Raiders of the Lost Ark”: Kolata, p. 204.
On this solitary expedition: Elizabeth Fernandez, “The Virus Detective,” SF Gate, February 17, 2002, sfgate.com/magazine/article/The-Virus-detective-Dr-John-Hultin-has-found-2872017.php.
At about the same time: Fernandez, “The Virus Detective,” February 17, 2002.
“I said that a terrible thing had happened”: Kolata, p. 261.
Using his wife’s pruning shears: Fernandez, “The Virus Detective,” February 17, 2002.
“For the first time in history”: Kolata, p. 307.
“When a pathogen”: David Quammen, Spillover, p. 21.
“It is unclear what gave the 1918 virus”: Jeffery K. Taubenberger, “The Origin and Virulence of the 1918 ‘Spanish’ Influenza Virus,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 150, no. 1 (March 2006), p. 90, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720273/.
“Influenza and pneumonia death rates for 15-to-34-year-olds”: Taubenberger, “The Origin and Virulence,” pp. 90–91.
“Essentially people are drowned”: “New tests reveal why 1918 flu was so deadly,” Associated Press, January 17, 2007, nbcnews.com/id/16670768/ns/health-cold_and_flu/t/new-tests-reveal-why-flu-was-so-deadly/#.WWYq4MaZNE7.
“Never again allow me to say”: Quoted in Michael Levin, “An Historical Account of the Influence,” Maryland State Medical Journal 27, no. 5 (May 1978), p. 61, in Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 403.
The life expectancy in America: Kolata, Flu, p. 7.
“Around the world, authorities made plans for international”: Barry, p. 398.
AFTERWORD
We can only conclude: Jeffery K. Taubenberger and David M. Morens, “1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no. 1 (January 2006), pp. 15–22. dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1201.050979.
In 1997, an outbreak of avian: Youngerman, Pandemics, p. 322.
After a long manhunt: Scott Shane, “FBI, Laying Out Evidence, Closes Anthrax Case,” New York Times, February 19, 2010, nytimes.com/2010/02/20/us/20anthrax.html.
An outbreak of cholera in Haiti: “Haiti Opens Drive to Vaccinate 820,000 as Cholera Flares,” New York Times, November 9, 2016. nytimes.com/2016/11/10/world/americas/haiti-cholera-hurricane-matthew.html.
Chinese authorities were again battling: Chris Buckley, “China Fights Spread of Deadly Avian Virus,” New York Times, February 18, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/02/18/world/asia/china-bird-flu.html.
When the Moline family, turkey farmers in Iowa: Maryn McKenna, “The Looming Threat of Avian Flu,” New York Times Magazine, April 13, 2016, nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-looming-threat-of-avian-flu.html.
Since then, Zika has waned almost everywhere: Marina Lopes and Nick Miroff, “The Panic Is Over at Zika’s Epicenter, but for Many, the Struggle Has Just Begun,” Washington Post, February 7, 2017.
The unpredictable weather patterns: Maryn McKenna, “Why the Menace of Mosquitoes Will Only Get Worse,” New York Times Magazine, April 20, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/04/20/magazine/why-the-menace-of-mosquitoes-will-only-get-worse.html.
“We can only conclude that since it happened once”: Taubenberger and Morens, “1918 Influenza,” 2006.
“The new vaccine against rotavirus”: Donald G. McNeil Jr. “New Vaccine Could Slow Disease That Kills 600 Children a Day,” New York Times, March 22, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/03/22/health/rotavirus-vaccine.html.
“The virus can remain”: Barry, The Great Influenza, p. 457.
“So a terror seeped into the society”: Barry, p. 461.
“nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror”: Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, as published in Samuel Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 11–16, on History Matters, historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/.
“Climate change is turning abnormal weather”: McKenna, “Why the Menace of Mosquitoes,” April 20, 2017.
Tropical diseases “know no borders”: Donald G. McNeil Jr., “Trump Plan Eliminates a Global Sentinel Against Disease, Experts Warn,” New York Times, March 17, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/03/17/health/global-health-fogarty-international-center-viruses.html.
APPENDIX 1
The winners of past wars: Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, p. 197.
For almost two centuries: Kathryn Senior, “How and When Were Bacteria Discovered?” July 6, 2017, Types of Bacteria typesofbacteria.co.uk/how-when-were-bacteria-discovered.html.
People in good health: Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Richard Crawley (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1910), 2.49, in Perseus Digital Library, perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/.
Over that time, the plague may have killed a quarter: R. J. Littman, “The Plague of Athens: Epidemiology and Paleopathology,” abstract, Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine 76, no. 5, (October 2009): pp. 456–67, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19787658.
“Men, not knowing what was to become of them”: Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 2.52.
They died themselves the most thickly: Thucydides, 2.47.
He is also famed for inspiring the phrase: Robert H. Shmerling, “First, Do No Harm,” October 13, 2015, Harvard Health Blog, health.harvard.edu/blog/first-do-no-harm-201510138421.
“Prayer indeed is good”: Hippocrates, Regimen 4.87, Hippocrates vol. 4, trans. W. H. S. Jones (London: William Heinemann, 1959).
At that time: Sanjib Khumar Ghosh, “Human cadaveric dissection: a historical account from ancient Greece to the modern era,” Anatomy and Cell Biology, (September 22, 2015) U.S. National Library of Medicine. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582158/.
“Whatever this pestilence”: Lois N. Magner, A History of Medicine, p. 74.
It is far more likely that an infectious disease: “Intestinal Bug Likely Killed Alexander the Great,” news release, June 1, 1998, University of Maryland Medical Center, umm.edu/news-and-events/news-releases/1998/intestinal-bug-likely-killed-alexander-the-great.
“as a man might heap up hay in a stack”: John of Ephesus, quoted in John Aberth, Plagues in World History (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), p. 26.
The plague has three different variations: “Plague: Symptoms and Causes,” Mayo Clinic, mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/plague/symptoms-causes/dxc-20196766.
“Every morning, the streets”: Magner, p.120.
“She ruled in beauty o’er this heart of mine”: Petrarch, “Soleasi Nel Mio Cor,” VIII, Fifteen Sonnets of Petrarch, trans. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Boston, 1883), sonnets.org/petrarch.htm.
“In the year then of our Lord 1348”: Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, or Ten Days Entertainment of Boccaccio, trans. W. K. Kelley (London, 1872), pp. 29–40, shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Boccaccio.html.
Whipping themselves bloody: “The Flagellants Attempt to Repel the Black Death, 1349,” EyeWitness to History, 2010, eyewitnesstohistory.com/flagellants.htm.
Civilization decreased: Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), quoted in Youngerman, Pandemics and Global Health, p. 198.
“As the Indians did not know”: Toribio Motolinía, History of the Indians of New Spain, ed. and trans. Elizabeth A. Foster (Berkeley: Cortés Society, 1950), p. 8, quoted in Arndt F. Laemmerzahl, “Small Pox,” lecture notes, 2008, mason.gmu.edu/~alaemmer/disease/smallpox.pdf.
“virgin soil epidemics”: Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 33, no. 2 (April 1976): pp. 289–299, jstor.org/stable/1922166.
“For the natives”: John Winthrop to Nathaniel Rich, May 22, 1634, Gilder Lehrman Collection, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, gilderlehrman.org.
The American Academy of Pediatrics: “Ipecac,” A Minute for Kids, American Academy of Pediatrics, aap.org.
Inoculation, or variolation, had been used: Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana, p. 31.
The idea had come from a slave: David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 142.
A prominent Puritan minster: Fenn, p. 41.
“With the exception of the war itself”: Fenn, p. 9.
“For almost two centuries, the knowledge”: Senior, “How and When Were Bacteria Discovered?” July 6, 2017.
she was quarantined: Filio Marineli, Gregory Tsoucalas, Marianna Karamanou, and George Androutsos, “Mary Mallon (1869–1938) and the history of typhoid fever,” Annals of Gastroenterology 2013, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3959940/.
“screaming and cursing them”: Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook, p. 5.
“With the growing and profound knowledge”: Kolata, Flu, p. 47.
July 1916: “Whatever Happened to Polio?” Communities, The American Epidemics, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, amhistory.si.edu/polio/americanepi/communities.htm.
One was in South Sudan: “Ebola Virus Disease,” fact sheet, June 2017, World Health Organization, who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/.
APPENDIX 2
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “CDC Says ‘Take 3’ Actions to Fight the Flu,” August 1, 2016, cdc.gov/flu/protect/preventing.htm.