Our main source of data is the 1895-1945 Statistical Abstract of Taiwan [14] which contains the complete and detailed vital statistics of Taiwan during all 50 years of the Japanese occupation including detailed yearly healthcare records. We will use this data to explore the public health events that had occurred during those years during and immediately after the initial epidemic in 1918. During 1918-1920, there were 12 large public hospitals, 18-19 smaller public hospitals, and 60-68 private hospitals in Taiwan. In addition, there was a large network of trained "public medics" which was responsible for, among other duties, providing basic and primary medical care in the local community for people with clinical symptoms and for reporting local incidence of illnesses (including epidemic intelligence) to the government [15] . However, only the numbers of outpatients, in-patient hospitalizations, and all-cause deaths for the large public hospital and the public medics system were given in the Statistics Abstract [14] .