The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the deadliest of its kind in history, affected one in four people worldwide and claimed 50 million lives.
For the U.S., the Spanish flu is believed to have started in Kansas in January 1918, though the global origin point remains uncertain.Charles McCain With modern medicine still in its infancy, many misunderstood how individuals could contract and spread this illness, and doctors often misdiagnosed it given its similarity to the common cold. Fine Art America Military personnel across the United States and Europe are generally believed to have played a large role in spreading the disease.Photos Of War Of the total fatalities, more than 675,000 were Americans.Interrete Authorities gave all sorts of advice to increase the public’s chances of survival, though not all of it was well-informed.The Washington Post This advice ranged from eating raw onions to drinking “clabber,” a thick soured milk that was said to kill influenza germs with the power of lactic acid. Mashable Many streets across the U.S. were flushed to wash away germs and scores of public gatherings were canceled.Key To Safer Schools Gauze masks were recommended, which while helpful for stopping bacterial diseases, are not as useful in containing a virus.The Washington Post It was originally thought that a certain bacteria, Pfeiffer’s bacillus, was the culprit, though it wasn't found in any victim's corpses.The Washington Post With one-fourth of the entire world affected, it was almost impossible to escape the virus.Denver Post Nations already dealing with the effects and costs of the war now had a whole new set of challenges, which allowed the virus to ravage these already weakened countries.Business Insider In the U.S., some estimate that the flu killed more soldiers than World War I did.The Guardian Bodies piled up as the massive wave of deaths continued. Besides the lack of doctors and supplies, there weren't enough coffins, morticians, or gravediggers to keep up with the pandemic. WNPR The lucky ones who avoided infection had to deal with the public health ordinances to hinder the spread of the disease. Spitting on sidewalks, for instance, carried a steep fine.Influenza Archive Some towns required a signed certificate to gain entry and passengers could not board trains without them.CNN The pandemic left almost as quickly as it arrived, vanishing almost into oblivion by the summer of 1919. Paul D Or Pat The virus was not isolated until 1930, far after the Spanish Flu wrought havoc on the world’s population.Fine Art America Soldiers with the Spanish flu lie in beds at Kansas' Camp Funston.Wikimedia Commons Seattle police officers wear protective masks during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.Getty Images Dozens of patients at a time lay bedridden in hospitals like these during the course of the outbreak.Getty Images A poster warning against the dangers of the Spanish flu.Business Insider A masked war nurse pumps water at a field hospital.Business Insider A man sprays a London General Omnibus Co. bus with an anti-flu liquid.H. F. Davis/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images A worker spraying the top of the bus.Getty Images A woman protects her face as she works. Business Insider A baseball player wears a gauze mask. George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images Boys wear bags of camphor, one proposed treatment, around their necks in the hope of escaping the Spanish flu.Bettmann /Getty Images The Oakland Municipal Auditorium functioned as a temporary hospital with volunteer nurses from the American Red Cross.Underwood Archives/Getty Images Court is held in open air in San Francisco to decrease close-quarter germ transfer. Bettmann/Getty Images A telephone operator wears protective gauze.Bettmann/Getty Images A congregation prays on the steps of the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, San Francisco. People gathered to hear mass and pray for their health. Archive Photos/Getty Images St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps workers on duty. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images Volunteers feed the children of stricken families.Bettmann/Getty Images A woman wearing a flu mask.Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images A New York Street cleaner attempts to curb the spread of the influenza epidemic. Bettmann/Getty Images
Inside The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic That Left 50 Million Dead View GalleryThe unprecedented carnage of World War I accounted for some 20 million deaths between 1914 and 1918, leaving the world in a state of shock unlike anything seen before. But as the war was ending, another global cataclysm was underway. And though the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 may not be as widely known, it killed perhaps three times the amount of people that the Great War ever did.
The H1N1 influenza known as the Spanish flu swept the globe throughout 1918 and ultimately affected more than one-fourth of the world's population. It spread to the farthest reaches of the planet — from the Arctic to the remote islands of the Pacific — and claimed upwards of 50 million lives worldwide (though some say as many as 100 million).
By the time the worst of it ended in late 1918, it was the worst outbreak of its kind in human history. Nevertheless, experts still aren't clear on exactly why the Spanish flu was especially deadly or even where it first started.
What we do know is that World War I only exacerbated the spread and mortality of the disease, though world leaders tried to downplay the flu's effects in their own countries in order to not seem weak during wartime. But after the war ended and in the decades since, the true history that came to light about the Spanish flu pandemic indeed showed what a historic tragedy it truly was.
"Death Was There All The Time": The Spanish Flu Sweeps The Globe
Wikimedia CommonsMen bury victims of the Spanish flu in Labrador, Canada in 1918.
Despite the scores of studies that attempted to make sense of the 1918 flu pandemic after the fact, experts were never able to determine for certain where it started.
One prominent theory is that it began at a British army base in France, while another — albeit disputed — theory is that it started in northern China and was carried to Europe by Chinese laborers. Yet another noteworthy theory is that it originated in Kansas, where some of the first cases were noted in very early 1918.
Regardless of where it started, the Spanish flu spread quickly starting in the winter of 1918. With many of the early outbreak points being military bases, troops carried the disease across the Atlantic and throughout Europe as armies were deployed for World War I.
Troop movements, new modes of transportation (automobiles and planes, for starters), and easy transmission via coughing and sneezing allowed the Spanish flu to spread with ease. And once you were infected, you could experience standard flu symptoms like fever and aches — but perhaps also a deadly form of pneumonia in which the patient's "lungs filled with bloody fluid. They choked on the pinkish froth as they gasped for their last breath."
But these horrors were largely kept under wraps by most governments around the world who were not eager to show any signs of weakness during World War I. However, neutral Spain reported on their cases, hence the nickname Spanish flu.
Despite the relative lack of official reporting, the disease traveled around the world, leaving almost no area untouched. Things only grew worse in the fall of 1918 thanks to a second wave of the virus fueled by a new mutation that was deadlier than the first, making October and November the deadliest months of the entire 1918 pandemic. In the United States alone, the Spanish flu was so deadly that life expectancy dropped 12 years from 51 to 39 just for 1918.
"It was scary," survivor Kenneth Crotty, who was 11 and living in Massachusetts (one of the hardest hit areas), told CNN in 2005, "because every morning when you got up, you asked, 'Who died during the night?' You know death was there all the time."
In the end, death rates were about 2.5 percent and a total of 50 million are believed to have died.
The Aftermath Of The 1918 Flu Epidemic
Wikimedia CommonsRed Cross workers on the job in Washington, D.C. during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.
The 1918 flu pandemic peaked with the second wave in the late fall but then calmed quickly afterward. Just as researchers have little idea of how it started, they have equally little idea for certain of how it ended.
Some say it was the end of the war, a fortunate mutation in the disease, increased abilities to provide treatment, natural development of immunity across populations, or some combination of the above.
By the summer of 1919, the Spanish flu pandemic had all but ended. And yet, there was no immediate, successful push to learn about why the illness was so deadly, or why it traveled the way that it did. In fact, in certain respects, interest in combating the flu ended as soon as the pandemic did.
Some, including the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), say it had to do with the event's timing. "It is possible, that the pandemic's close association with World War I may have caused this amnesia," HHS wrote. "While more people died from the pandemic than from World War I, the war had lasted longer than the pandemic and caused greater and more immediate changes in American society."
It would take nearly a century before researchers developed an explanation for the 1918 flu's spread: Three genes were able to weaken the victim's respiratory systems — particularly the bronchial tubes and lungs — and allow pneumonia to take hold.
Ultimately, from its origins to its merciful end, the Spanish flu remains largely mysterious.
After this look at the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, read up on other devastating pandemics from history. Then, read up on the disturbing symptoms of the Black Death.
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