The Spanish Flu Essay

Introduction
The Spanish Flu of 1918 to 1919 was the deadliest flu in modern history. It infected about 500 million people globally which represented about 33% of the population at that time and claimed the lives of an estimated 20-50 million victims. More than 25% of the US population infected and resulted in the death of more than 675,000 Americans (Johnson & Mueller, 2002). "Flu victims were wracked by fevers often spiking higher than 104 degrees and body aches so severe that the slightest touch was torture. Cyanosis was perhaps the most terrifying hallmark of the pneumonia that often accompanied this flu. A lack of oxygen in the blood turned one's skin a bluish-blackleading to speculation that the Black Death had again come calling (Kreiser, 2006)." The flu spread fast because there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat it. Despite killing a large fraction of the population, the Spanish flu is rarely mentioned in American history books. This paper seeks to put a spotlight on an almost forgotten outbreak of the Spanish flu's, a piece of American history that is barely written or talked about in history books.
The Spanish flu claimed more lives than World War I. The war claimed an estimated 16 million lives whereas the flu took the lives of approximately 50 million (Johnson & Mueller, 2002). Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy (Deseret News). An estimated 43,000 servicemen mobilized for WWI died of influenza (Crosby). Within months, the epidemic had claimed more people than any other illness in chronological accounts. The disease broke out in two phases the 'three-day fever' and the 'fall fever.' During the three-day fever which occurred in the late spring of 1918, the plague appeared without warning, and only a few deaths got reported while other victims recovered after a few days. However, when the disease resurfaced in the fall, it was much more aggressive and claimed the lives of those who contracted the virus. Health officials, scientists, and doctors could not identify the flu strain that was striking so viciously and quickly it was immune to medicines and defied all efforts to keep it under control. Victims succumbed to the disease within a few hours, or a few days of developing symptoms suffocating from having their lungs filled with fluid as a result of the disease. The flu did not discriminate it infected even young adults who were rarely affected by such kinds of infectious diseases and was rampant in both rural and urban areas (Crosby, 2003).
Despite the mass death toll, it caused, the Spanish flu did not receive the notoriety in American history like other epidemics of the times. However, there is sufficient documentation of the disease as shown in some select records found in the National Archives. The chronicling in these documents highlights the overwhelming onslaught of the disease and makes it evident that it was a major global disaster.