The Spanish flu in Bohemia through the perspective of death registers in 1910-1925

Spanish flu—the first horseman

The Spanish flu, one of the worst epidemics in history, appeared in 1918, on the eve of the end of the World War I. The characteristic of the epidemic on the territory of the city of Rijeka has been poorly studied. Certainly, the lack of primary sources, such as hospital registries, have made the understanding of the incidence and the course of the epidemic in the city more difficult. Therefore, the death certificates have emerged as the main primary source. The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe mortality caused by the (Spanish) flu during 1918 and at the beginning of 1919, using the death registers of those who lived in the area of the city center and the surrounding parishes. The results of the Spanish flu mortality research in the area of Rijeka are compared to the Spanish flu specific mortality on the territory of the three parishes situated in the wider area of Rijeka – Brseč, Mošćenice and Lovran. The elucidation of the characteristics of the Spanish flu epidemic and its impact on the quotidian life in the city of Rijeka is possible through the analysis of daily newspapers as well. In this paper, we have explored such articles in the La Bilancia, Rijeka’s newspaper published in Italian.

The so-called “Spanish” influenza virus seems to have to originate from Haskell County, Kansas. World War I gave rise to ideal conditions for a viral pandemic through overcrowded military camps around the world and the massive transfer of military personnel. Unlike other viral pandemics, the Spanish influenza selectively killed young people at an astonishing speed. The Spanish influenza had three waves, of which the second wave was most severe, causing several million deaths. It swamped many large cities around the world, as well as military camps. The influenza virus uses two proteins—hemagglutinin and neuraminidase—to invade cells and replicates through insertion of the viral genome into the invaded cell nuclei. An influenza pandemic generally develops when a radical change in these two proteins occurs through antigen drift. There were no effective treatments or preventive methods during the Spanish influenza pandemic. No authorities, including governments or cities, presented effective guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus, and they sometimes even misled the populace through absolute media control during World War I. The virulence of the virus finally abated by way of “returning to the mean.” Key words: Spanish influenza; Pandemics; World War I.

Our Letter centres around George J. Hall’s and Thomas Sargent’s article ‘Three world wars: fiscal-monetary consequences’ published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) in 2022 and representing a study of the US financing sources spanning over a century. We expand the analysis of the US financing sources (taxes, bonds, money) to combat the world wars and COVID-19 by adding another crisis, namely the Spanish flu (1918–1920). We assess the fiscal-monetary comparability of wars and pandemics and investigate whether the finding that taxation was less used to combat COVID-19 (as compared to WWI/WWII) applies to a comparable disease. By replicating their methodology, we reconstruct the US financing sources to combat the Spanish flu and conclude that this pandemic was financed more similarly to WWI/WWII than to COVID-19. While our findings reconfirm – COVID-19 is an exception both when compared to WWI/WWII and to the Spanish flu –, we provide explanations for this different mix of financing sources. Future research could investigate whether the ‘war on COVID-19’ followed by that one in Ukraine might re-create overlapping crises as for WWI and the Spanish flu.

Objective — to analyze historical data on one of the largest in the history of humanity pandemic of influenza, «The 1918 flu pandemic» or «Spanish flu», which claimed about 100 million lives according to various data and caused significant changes in the social and political life of mankind. Conclusions. In 1918–19, humanity faced one of the most dangerous pandemics in history — «Spanish flu». The causes of the mass spread of the influenza pandemic in 1918–19 were the World War, mass migration of the population, and the poor state of medical care in the disease itself. 100 years after «Spanish flu» we have a clear understanding of what humanity encountered, the nature of the virus itself and can predict future pandemics of the disease. The value of information regarding the «Spanish flu» pandemic lies in its historical as well as purely scientific significance for scientists and humanity as a whole. Recent pandemics and the flu epidemic show the importance of a retrospective analysis of previous outbreaks of the flu to prevent a large number of both the sick and the victims of this ailment.

The 1918–1919 flu pandemic: lessons learned or fingers crossed?

We are still in the early stage of 21st century and the two pandemics Spanish flu and COVID-19 are the presentative pandemics in 20th and 21st centuries, respectively. The Spanish flu pandemic raged from 1918 to 1920, just after World War I. It was the first influenza pandemic worldwide; since then, humankind has experienced many such pandemics. Spanish flu is caused by a virus. However, since virology was not well established at that time, the new clinical system was needed to cope with “unknown pathogen”; during the pandemic, high infection rates were recorded, but our predecessors managed to somehow tackle the situation. With respect to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both the virus and its genome were clarified quickly. Nonetheless, it has turned out to be quite an intriguing infectious disease, with the high rates in developed countries, such as the US and those in Europe, which have aging societies, and low rates in developing countries such as those in Africa, where the population is largely young. Here, I compared and discuss the two pandemics, COVID-19 and Spanish flu.

A little more than a hundred years ago, the humanity plunged into the second wave of «the Spanish flu» just like in the spring of 2021 it plunged into the second wave of coronavirus. Despite the significant biological and virological differences between COVID-19 coronavirus and the Spanish flu, already known to us in the second year of the pandemic, the obvious significant similarity in the dynamics of the epidemiological scenarios of both pandemics is striking.It is officially believed that the epidemic in Europe began in the last months of the deadly First World War (1914—1918). Its development and the next catastrophic spread were caused by: unsanitary conditions, poor nutrition, overcrowding in trenches and refugee camps, the demobilization and the return of soldiers home, as also the rapid development of vehicles at the beginning of the 20th century (trains, cars, high-speed ships). The Spanish flu, caused by the H1N1 virus, had several «waves». It is difficult to estimate the exact number of those who had the Spanish flu, but presumably, this is 500—550 million people. About 25 million people died (some studies indicate a figure of 50 or even 100 million). Unfortunately, the mankind quickly forgot about this viral pandemic and consequently was objectively compelled, after a hundred years, to unexpectedly make the same mistake again and introduce quarantine as the only way to limit the further spread of the next viral pandemic of mankind. The Spanish flu significantly influenced all the further development of medicine. While before the deadly pandemic the private medical practice was widespread, in the process of its overcoming, the formation of the modern international health care system took place. In 1919, the International Bureau for Epidemic Control was founded in Vienna.

The Spanish flu appeared at the end of the First World War and spread around the world in three waves: spring-summer in 1918, which was mild; autumn fatal wave, in the same year; and winter wave in 1919, which also had great consequences. From the United States of America, as the cradle of its origin, the Spanish flu spread to all the inhabited continents, and it did not bypass Serbia either. Research on the Spanish flu, as the deadliest and most widespread pandemic in the human history, was mostly based on statistical researches. The development of the geographic information systems and spatial analyses has enabled the implementation of the information of location in existing researches, allowing the identification of the spatial patterns of infectious diseases. The subject of this paper is the spatial patterns of the share of deaths from the Spanish flu in the total population in Valjevo Srez (in Western Serbia), at the settlement level, and their determination by the geographical characteristics of the studied area-the average altitude and the distance of the settlement from the center of the Srez. This paper adopted hot spot analysis, based on Gi* statistic, and the results indicated pronounced spatial disparities (spatial grouping of values), for all the studied parameters. The conclusions derived from the studying of historical spatial patterns of infectious diseases and mortality can be applied as a platform for defining measures in the case of an epidemic outbreak with similar characteristics.

In this paper, we discuss the classical modelling approach of pandemics as a negative labour shock. We perform an archival analysis of one of the largest Italian banks (Credito Italiano) during the First World War – Spanish Flu period (1914–1920). In particular, we scrutinise the circulars that the central management of the bank sent out to the local branches, with the aim to assess whether the Spanish Flu has been perceived by contemporaries as an event seriously affecting personnel management. Though restricted to a single case-study, archival evidence does not support the existence of a remarkable negative labour supply shock affecting personnel management because of the Spanish Flu pandemic. Other war-related events probably increased the system’s resilience.

Reviewed by: The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada by Mark Osborne Humphries Sarah Glassford Humphries, Mark Osborne — The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. 323. If, like me, you tried to write an undergraduate essay in the early 2000s on “Spanish Flu” in Canada, you probably found few sources, wrote your 10 or 20 pages, and moved on with your life thinking you knew what there was to be known. Mark Osborne Humphries’ The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada now joins Esyllt Jones’s Influenza 1918: Disease, Death, and Struggle in Winnipeg (UTP 2007) in showing us how little we actually understood. Humphries’ important and insightful book significantly alters the place of Spanish Flu in the landscape of Canadian social and medical history. Some 50,000 Canadians died in this epidemic, and in The Last Plague Humphries demonstrates that their deaths ultimately brought Canada into a new, modern era of public health work and knowledge. Even if they have never spared a thought for cholera, smallpox, or any other historical epidemic, most students and scholars of modern history are at least familiar with the existence of the global 1918–19 influenza pandemic, hot on the heels of the First World War. Humphries gives the wartime context of the epidemic its due, but his crucial contribution to the historiography is to reframe the story completely, moving it from the footnotes of wartime social and military history to a central position in the long history of Canadian public health. In Humphries’ assessment, the Spanish Flu epidemic served as a vital turning point in the evolution of Canadians’ collective understanding of the proper role of government in fostering a healthy population, as well as the country’s understanding of disease more broadly (from something outsiders brought in, to something Canadians themselves spread). In public health, as in so many other respects, the wartime crisis prompted dramatic re-imaginings of how state and citizens should interact. The book therefore has important things to say to those interested not only in health history, but also in wartime society and state formation. Above all, this is a book about context, and this long view proves not only innovative but also highly instructive. After the introduction, the book begins nearly a century before the Spanish Flu epidemic, outlining in chapters two to four how Canada dealt with various 19th century epidemics, how public health and sanitation reform movements influenced Canada before 1914, and how the country dealt with an influenza epidemic in 1889–91. Chapters five through seven examine the 1918–19 influenza pandemic, assessing the impact of the disease’s first (milder) and second (deadlier) waves, as well as municipal, provincial, and federal government responses. Chapter eight covers the related-but-separate issue of the epidemic’s wartime context. The remaining two chapters and conclusion demonstrate the role of the epidemic in fundamentally changing the course of Canadian public health policy from 1919 onward. Sixty-nine pages of endnotes, a wide-ranging 39-page bibliography, and a 17-page index round out this useful resource for both scholars and students. [End Page 559] The bibliography stands as a testament to Humphries’ exhaustive primary and secondary source research, which encompasses bureaucratic, military, women’s, labour, and Western social history, as well as the history of medicine and health which is its primary focus. Overall, Humphries’ sources serve him well: his detailed tracking of the multiple vectors of influenza in chapters five and six, for example, convincingly overturn the previously-held assumption that the epidemic came to Canada from Europe with returning soldiers. Similarly, in chapter seven he makes excellent use of primary sources and existing provincial and local studies of the epidemic, to tell the on-the-ground story of how Canadians dealt with the deadly flu. The discussion of medical and popular remedies in circulation (pp. 121–22), and the descriptions of poverty and sickness in flu-stricken working-class districts (pp. 124–26) are particularly evocative and moving. However, Humphries’ love affair with his sources occasionally gets...

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Changing Lives and Lessons Learned.

It was the year 1918, when a new flu pandemic launched worldwide. Our study purports to depict the general icon of the 1918 pandemic epoch, for the readers to shape an overview of the events of the era. We have used some of the most important manuscripts concerning the pandemic to compose a historical note on the outbreak that almost annihilated the world. The name “Spanish Flu”, was defined wrongfully due to the scientific observation and research made in Spain, while the first appearance of the virus had been made in USA. The outbreak was devastating, causing millions to die, more than the First World War casualties. During new experiments upon the old virus strain, it was proved that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an influenza A - subtype H1N1 progenitor strain. Our mini review, enlightens some aspects of virus blast, in an effort for the readers to luxuriate in the tale, myths, and the true story of the 1918 pandemic.

The Spanish flu is a pandemic that was neglected even though it killed more people than World War I. At the end of 1918, newspaper reports are scarce due to war events, press cen-sorships, and burst political events. For decades after the epidemic was over, the Spanish flu was not the subject of scientific research. By analysing the entry from the registers of the six Neretva parishes (Borovci-Nova Selo, Desne-Bagalovići, Dobranje, Opuzen, Metkovic, Vidonje,and Vid), statistical data on the scale of the epidemic were reconstructed as well as the time course of the spread of the disease in the valley. The sex and age structure of the deceased were also analysed. The disease was spreading from Opuzen throughout the valley. The peak of the epidemic was in the second half of November and late December. The villages of the Desne and Vidonje were the most affected. Vid was also captured by the third wave in 1920, which was as deadly as that in 1918. The most affected were women, which fits in Croatian statistics. Comparing the timeline of epidemics in Zagreb and Neretva valley, it is visible that Zagreb was affected earlier by an epidemic. The third wave did not affect Zagreb as much as it did Neretva, especially the village of Vidonje. In these Neretva parishes, people under twenty were mostly affected. This deviates from the general rules and statistics of the Spanish flu, which stated that the most affected population was between the ages of twenty and forty. The article deals with data on the Spanish Neretva flu cases, while the number of infections remains unknown.

The Spanish flu pandemic spread in 1918-19 and infected about 500 million people, killing 50 to 100 million of them. People were suffering from severe poverty and malnutrition, especially in Europe, due to the First World War, and this contributed to the diffusion of the disease. In Italy, Spanish flu appeared in April 1918 with several cases of pulmonary congestion and bronchopneumonia; at the end of the epidemic, about 450.000 people died, causing one of the highest mortality rates in Europe. From the archive documents and the autoptic registers of the Hospital of Pisa, we can express some considerations on the impact of the pandemic on the population of the city and obtain some information about the deceased. In the original necroscopic registers, 43 autopsies were reported with the diagnosis of grippe (i.e. Spanish flu), of which the most occurred from September to December 1918. Most of the dead were young individuals, more than half were soldiers, and all of them showed confluent hemor agic lung bronchopneumonia, which was the typical feature of the pandemic flu. We believe that the study of the autopsy registers represents an incomparable instrument for the History of Medicine and a useful resource to understand the origin and the evolution of the diseases.