Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World

by Laura Spinney

  7. R. Buckle, Diaghilev: biographie, translated by Tony Mayer (Paris: J-C Lattès, 1980), p. 411.

  8. R. Stach, Kafka: The Years of Insight, translated by Shelley Frisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pp. 252–5.

  9. S. Słomczyn´ski, ‘“There are sick people everywhere–in cities, towns and villages”: the course of the Spanish flu epidemic in Poland’, Roczniki Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych, Tom LXXII–2012, pp. 73–93.

  10. A. W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 145–50.

  11. French Consul General’s report on sanitary conditions in Milan, 6 December 1918, Centre de documentation du Musée du Service de santé des armées, Carton 813.

  12. R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life, Volume II: The Arch-Poet 1915–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 135.

  13. W. Lanouette, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), pp. 41–2.

  14. H. Carpenter, A Serious Character: the Life of Ezra Pound (London: Faber & Faber, 1988), p. 337.

  15. G. Chowell et al., ‘The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic in Peru’, Vaccine, 22 July 2011; 29(S2):B21–6.

  16. A. Hayami, The Influenza Pandemic in Japan, 1918–1920: The First World War between Humankind and a Virus, translated by Lynne E. Riggs and Manabu Takechi (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2015), p. 175.

  4. Like a thief in the night

  1. N. R. Grist, ‘Pandemic influenza 1918’, British Medical Journal, 22–9 December 1979; 2(6205):1632–3.

  2. N. P. A. S. Johnson, Britain and the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic: A Dark Epilogue (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 68–9.

  3. L. Campa, Guillaume Apollinaire (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2013), p. 764.

  4. Letter written to Richard Collier by Margarethe Kühn, 26 April 1972. Unpublished. In the collection of the Imperial War Museum, London.

  5. J. T. Cushing and A. F. Stone (eds.), Vermont in the world war: 1917–1919 (Burlington, VT: Free Press Printing Company, 1928), p. 6.

  6. C. Ammon, ‘Chroniques d’une épidémie: Grippe espagnole à Genève’, PhD thesis (University of Geneva, 2000), p. 37.

  7. M. Honigsbaum, Living with Enza: The Forgotten Story of Britain and the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918 (London: Macmillan, 2009), p. 81.

  8. The title of Porter’s story, from which this book takes its own title, references an African-American spiritual, which in turn references Revelations 6:8: ‘And there, as I looked, was another horse, sickly pale; and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades came close behind. To him was given power over a quarter of the earth, with the right to kill by sword and by famine, by pestilence and wild beasts.’

  9. M. Ramanna, ‘Coping with the influenza pandemic: the Bombay experience’, in Phillips and Killingray (eds.), p. 88.

  10. P. Nava, Chão de ferro (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1976), ch. 2: ‘Rua Major Ávila’.

  11. S. C. Adamo, ‘The broken promise: race, health, and justice in Rio de Janeiro, 1890–1940’, PhD thesis (University of New Mexico, 1983), p. iv.

  12. H. C. Adams, ‘Rio de Janeiro–in the land of lure’, The National Geographic Magazine, September 1920: 38(3):165–210.

  13. T. Meade, ‘Civilising’ Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889–1930 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996).

  14. A. da C. Goulart, ‘Revisiting the Spanish flu: the 1918 influenza pandemic in Rio de Janeiro’, História, Ciências, Saúde–Manguinhos, January–April 2005; 12(1):1–41.

  15. Ibid.

  16. R. A. dos Santos, ‘Carnival, the plague and the Spanish flu’, História, Ciências, Saúde–Manguinhos, January–March 2006; 13(1):129–58.

  PART THREE: MANHU, OR WHAT IS IT?

  5. Disease eleven

  1. World Health Organization Best Practices for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases (Geneva: World Health Organization, May 2015), http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/163636/1/WHO_HSE_FOS_15.1_eng.pdf?ua=1

  2. R. A. Davis, The Spanish Flu: Narrative and Cultural Identity in Spain, 1918 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2013).

  3. J. D. Müller, ‘What’s in a name: Spanish influenza in sub-Saharan Africa and what local names say about the perception of this pandemic’, paper presented at ‘The Spanish Flu 1918–1998: reflections on the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 after 80 years’ (international conference, Cape Town, 12–15 September 1998).

  6. The doctors’ dilemma

  1. N. Yildirim, A History of Healthcare in Istanbul (Istanbul: Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency and Istanbul University, 2010), p. 134.

  2. Dr Marcou, ‘Report on the sanitary situation in Soviet Russia’, Correspondance politique et commerciale, série Z Europe, URSS (1918–1940), Cote 117CPCOM (Le centre des archives diplomatiques de la Courneuve, France).

  3. H. A. Maureira, ‘“Los culpables de la miseria”: poverty and public health during the Spanish influenza epidemic in Chile, 1918–1920’, PhD thesis (Georgetown University, 2012), p. 237.

  4. B. J. Andrews, ‘Tuberculosis and the Assimilation of Germ Theory in China, 1895–1937’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, January 1997; 52:142.

  5. D. G. Gillin, Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 36.

  6. P. T. Watson, ‘Some aspects of medical work’, Fenchow, October 1919; 1(2):16.

  7. N. M. Senger, ‘A Chinese Way to Cure an Epidemic’, The Missionary Visitor (Elgin, IL: Brethren Publishing House, February 1919), p. 50.

  8. A. W. Hummel, ‘Governor Yen of Shansi’, Fenchow, October 1919; 1(2):23.

  7. The wrath of God

  1. R. Collier, The Plague of the Spanish Lady: October 1918–January 1919 (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 30–1.

  2. P. Ziegler, The Black Death (London: Penguin, 1969), p. 14.

  3. In Phillips and Killingray (eds.), ‘Introduction’, p. 6.

  4. A. W. Crosby, p. 47.

  5. Letter written to Richard Collier, 16 May 1972. Unpublished. In the collection of the Imperial War Museum, London.

  6. Survey published by the Pew Research Center in 2007: http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/see-aids-as-gods-punishment-for-immorality/.

  7. J. de Marchi, The True Story of Fátima (St Paul: Catechetical Guild Educational Society, 1952), http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/tsfatima.htm.

  8. Boletín Oficial de la Diócesis de Zamora, 8 December 1914.

  9. J. Baxter, Buñuel (London: Fourth Estate, 1995), p. 19.

  10. J. G.-F. del Corral, La epidemia de gripe de 1918 en al provincia de Zamora. Estudio estadistico y social (Zamora: Instituto de Estudios Zamoranos ‘Florián de Ocampo’, 1995).

  11. Boletín Oficial del Obispado de Zamora, 15 November 1918.

  PART FOUR: THE SURVIVAL INSTINCT

  8. Chalking doors with crosses

  1. V. A. Curtis, ‘Infection-avoidance behaviour in humans and other animals’, Trends in Immunology, October 2014; 35(10):457–64.

  2. C. Engel, Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn From Them (London: Phoenix, 2003), pp. 215–17.

  3. F. Gealogo, ‘The Philippines in the world of the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919’, Philippine Studies, June 2009; 57(2):261–92.

  4. ‘Ce que le docteur Roux de l’Institut Pasteur pense de la grippe’, Le Petit Journal, 27 October 1918.

  5. G. W. Rice, ‘Japan and New Zealand in the 1918 influenza pandemic’, in Phillips and Killingray (eds.), p. 81.

  6. R. Chandavarkar, ‘Plague panic and epidemic politics in India, 1896–1914’, in Terence Ranger and Paul Slack (eds.), Epidemics & Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 203–40.

  7. Ibid., p. 229. From a report written by an executive health officer in Bombay.

  8. N. Tomes, ‘“Destroyer
and teacher”: managing the masses during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic’, Public Health Reports, 2010; 125(S3):48–62.

  9. Ibid.

  10. E. Tognotti, ‘Lessons from the history of quarantine, from plague to influenza A’, Emerging Infectious Diseases, February 2013; 19(2):254–9.

  11. C. See, ‘Alternative menacing’, Washington Post, 25 February 2005.

  12. F. Aimone, ‘The 1918 influenza epidemic in New York City: a review of the public health response’, Public Health Reports, 2010; 125(S3):71–9.

  13. A. M. Kraut, ‘Immigration, ethnicity, and the pandemic’, Public Health Reports, 2010;125(S3):123–33.

  14. L. M. DeBauche, Reel Patriotism: The Movies and World War I (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), p. 149.

  15. J. Stella, New York, translated by Moyra Byrne (undated).

  16. A. M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the ‘Immigrant Menace’ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 125.

  17. Excess mortality rates (a measure of the number of people who died over and above what might have been expected in a ‘normal’ or non-pandemic year) were 40 and 55 per cent higher, respectively, in Boston and Philadelphia than in New York.

  18. Olson D.R. et al. ‘Epidemiological evidence of an early wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic in New York City, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2005 Aug 2; 102(31):11059–11063.

  19. A. M. Kraut, ‘Immigration, ethnicity, and the pandemic’, Public Health Reports, 2010; 125(S3):123–33.

  20. R. J. Potter, ‘Royal Samuel Copeland, 1868–1938: a physician in politics’, PhD thesis (Western Reserve University, 1967).

  21. Percy Cox to George N. Curzon, Tehran, 8 March 1920, insert # 1, Anthony R. Neligan to Percy Cox, FO 371/3892 (London: Public Records Office).

  22. W. G. Grey, Meshed Diary No. 30, for the week ending 27 July 1918. British Library, London: IOR/L/PS/10/211.

  23. M. G. Majd, The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917–1919 (Lanham: University Press of America, 2003).

  24. The Meshed pilgrimage, P4002/1918, India Office Records (London: British Library).

  25. W. Floor, ‘Hospitals in Safavid and Qajar Iran: an enquiry into their number, growth and importance’, in F. Speziale (ed.), Hospitals in Iran and India, 1500–1950s (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 83.

  26. W. M. Miller, My Persian Pilgrimage: An Autobiography (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1989), p. 56.

  27. R. E. Hoffman, ‘Pioneering in Meshed, The Holy City of Iran; Saga of a Medical Missionary’, ch. 4: ‘Meshed, the Holy City’ (archives of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, undated manuscript).

  28. L. I. Conrad, ‘Epidemic disease in early Islamic society’, in Ranger and Slack (eds.), pp. 97–9.

  29. Document number 105122/3, Documentation Centre, Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi, Mashed.

  30. W. M. Miller, p. 61.

  31. Hoffman, p. 100.

  9. The placebo effect

  1. G. Heath and W. A. Colburn, ‘An evolution of drug development and clinical pharmacology during the twentieth century’, Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 2000; 40:918–29.

  2. A. Noymer, D. Carreon and N. Johnson, ‘Questioning the salicylates and influenza pandemic mortality hypothesis in 1918–1919’, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 15 April 2010; 50(8):1203.

  3. Nava, p. 202.

  4. B. Echeverri, in Phillips and Killingray (eds.), p. 179.

  5. Report by Mathis and Spillmann of the 8th Army, Northern Region, 16 October 1918; and ‘Une cure autrichienne de la grippe espagnole’, memo dated 2 November 1918, Centre de documentation du Musée du Service de santé des armées, Carton 813.

  6. P. Lemoine, Le Mystère du placebo (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006).

  7. V. A. Kuznetsov, ‘Professor Yakov Yulievich Bardakh (1857–1929): pioneer of bacteriological research in Russia and Ukraine’, Journal of Medical Biography, August 2014; 22(3):136–44.

  8. A. Rowley, Open Letters: Russian Popular Culture and the Picture Postcard 1880–1922 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).

  9. Odesskiye Novosti (Odessa News), 2 October 1918.

  10. J. Tanny, City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), p. 158.

  11. V. Khazan, Pinhas Rutenberg: From Terrorist to Zionist, Volume I: Russia, the First Emigration (1879-1919) (in Russian) (Moscow: 2008), p. 113.

  12. There is often confusion over dates in Russia in early 1919. The Soviets had imposed the Gregorian calendar in 1918, but in the brief interlude in which the Whites were in power in 1919, they re-imposed the old-style Julian calendar. Dates relating to Vera Kholodnaya’s illness and death are given according to the Gregorian calendar. To obtain the Julian equivalent, subtract 13 days.

  13. Kuznetsov.

  10. Good Samaritans

  1. J. Drury, C. Cocking and S. Reicher, ‘Everyone for themselves? A comparative study of crowd solidarity among emergency survivors’, British Journal of Social Psychology, September 2009; 48(3):487–506.

  2. D. Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year (1722).

  3. J. G. Ellison, ‘“A fierce hunger”: tracing impacts of the 1918–19 influenza epidemic in south-west Tanzania’, in Phillips and Killingray (eds.), p. 225.

  4. S. J. Huber and M. K. Wynia, ‘When pestilence prevails… physician responsibilities in epidemics’, American Journal of Bioethics, Winter 2004; 4(1):W5–11.

  5. W. C. Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (New York: Random House, 1951), pp. 159–60.

  6. M. Jacobs, Reflections of a General Practitioner (London: Johnson, 1965), pp. 81–3.

  7. La Croix-Rouge suisse pendant la mobilisation 1914–1919 (Berne: Imprimerie Coopérative Berne, 1920), pp. 62–3.

  8. Dos Santos.

  9. S. Caulfield, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 2. See also Dos Santos for commentary.

  10. K. Miller, ‘Combating the “Flu” at Bristol Bay’, The Link (Seattle, WA: Alumni Association of Providence Hospital School of Nursing, 1921), pp. 64–66.

  11. H. Stuck, A Winter Circuit of Our Arctic Coast: A Narrative of a Journey with Dog-Sleds Around the Entire Arctic Coast of Alaska (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), p. ix.

  12. J. W. VanStone, The Eskimos of the Nushagak River: An Ethnographic History (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1967), pp. 3–4.

  13. M. Lantis, ‘The Religion of the Eskimos’, in V. Ferm (ed.), Forgotten Religions (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1950), pp. 309–39.

  14. H. Napoleon, Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being (Fairbanks: Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1996), p. 5.

  15. J. Branson and T. Troll (eds.), Our Story: Readings from South-west Alaska (Anchorage: Alaska Natural History Association, 2nd edition, 2006), p. 129.

  16. Report of L. H. French to W. T. Lopp, 8 April 1912, Department of the Interior. In Branson and Troll (eds.), p. 124.

  17. E. A. Coffin Diary, 1919–1924. Alaska State Library Historical Collections, MS 4–37-17.

  18. J. B. McGillycuddy, McGillycuddy, Agent: A Biography of Dr Valentine T. McGillycuddy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1941), p. 278.

  19. Ibid., republished as Blood on the Moon: Valentine McGillyCuddy and the Sioux (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), p. 285.

  20. K. Miller.

  21. S. Baker. Warden’s Letter to the Commissioner of Fisheries, Bureau of Fisheries, Department of Commerce, Seattle, WA, 26 November 1919. National Archives, Washington DC. Record Group 22: US Fish and Wildlife Service. Also the source of the previous quote.

  22. Coffin.

  23. A. B. Schwalbe, Dayspring on the Kuskokwim (Bethlehem, PA: Moravian Press, 1951), pp. 84–85.

  24. Report of D. Hotovitzky to His Eminence Alexander Nemolovsky, Archbishop of the Aleutian Islands and North America, 10 May
1920. Archives of the Orthodox Church in America. Also the source of the following quote.

  25. Nushagak was a village across the Nushagak River from Dillingham.

  26. Report of C. H. Williams, superintendent, Alaska Packers’ Association, in Branson and Troll (eds.), pp. 130–31.

  27. VanStone.

  28. K. Miller.

  PART FIVE: POST MORTEM

  11. The hunt for patient zero

  1. E. N. LaMotte, Peking Dust (New York: The Century Company, 1919), Appendix II.

  2. A. Witchard, England’s Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and the Great War (London: Penguin, China Penguin Special, 2014).

  3. Y-l. Wu, Memories of Dr Wu Lien-Teh, Plague Fighter (Singapore: World Scientific, 1995), pp. 32–33.

  4. L-t. Wu, ‘Autobiography’, Manchurian Plague Prevention Service Memorial Volume 1912–1932 (Shanghai: National Quarantine Service, 1934), p. 463.

  5. For one exposition of this theory, see: M. Humphries, ‘Paths of infection: the First World War and the origins of the 1918 influenza pandemic’, War in History, 2013; 21(1):55–81.

  6. U. Close, In the Land of the Laughing Buddha: the Adventures of an American Barbarian in China (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1924), pp. 39–42. Upton Close was Josef Washington Hall’s pen name.

  7. J. S. Oxford et al., ‘World War I may have allowed the emergence of “Spanish” influenza’, Lancet Infectious Diseases, February 2002;2:111–14.

  8. J. Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974).

  9. J. A. B. Hammond, W. Rolland and T. H. G. Shore, ‘Purulent bronchitis: a study of cases occurring amongst the British troops at a base in France’, Lancet, 1917; 193:41–4.

  10. A. Abrahams et al., ‘Purulent bronchitis: its influenza and pneumococcal bacteriology’, Lancet, 1917; 2:377–80.

  11. Personal correspondence with local historian Pierre Baudelicque.

  12. Personal correspondence with Douglas Gill.

  13. J. M. Barry, ‘The site of origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic and its public health implications’, Journal of Translational Medicine, 2004; 2:3.

  14. D. A. Pettit and J. Bailie, A Cruel Wind: Pandemic Flu in America, 1918–1920 (Murfreesboro: Timberlane Books, 2008), p. 65.