num_pages: 337
description: This is an unforgettable story, written in recognition that it has been too easily forgotten.Between August, 1918 and March, 1919, the Spanish influenza spread world-wide claiming over 25 million lives. Relatively mild in its first epidemic, the second and third waves of the disease had devastating results.The deadly infection swept along the United States' coasts; it invaded the armed forces en route to Europe, and t eventually became the mutual enemy facing the warring nations. Even the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference was attributed, in part, to Woodrow Wilson's own bout with the flu.Historian Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., recounts the effects of the Spanish Influenza in this country:● It withered essential services. The telephone company warned customers not to make calls due to their lack of personnel.● Undertakers went through a period of extreme unpopularity.● The flu obliged 37 out of 48 life insurance companies to reduce or omit dividends.● Eastern sanitarians, who had seen bodies waiting days for burial, warned San Francisco to start digging its graves early.In the aftermath, Katherine Anne Porter, who survived to remember wrote, "It just simply divided my life . . ."
language: English
title: Epidemic and Peace, 1918
titlecomplete: Epidemic and Peace, 1918
characters: Thomas Riggs Jr., Patrick Laidlaw, David Lloyd George, Richard Shope, Georges Clemenceau, Edward M. House, Woodrow Wilson
genres: Science, American History, Disease, Health, Historical, History, Medical, History Of Science, Medicine, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 583
publisher: Greenwood