The Spanish Flu of 1918: How it Happened, Progressed, and Ended

Spanish Flu of 1918

Spanish Flu of 1918 ambulance and gurney

The Common Flu

Nearly everyone, at least once in their life, has experienced an infectious episode of common Influenza. Flu symptoms include headaches, nausea, fever and chills, muscle ache, general malaise and sinus congestion.

Known simply as the flu, Influenza is a recurrent infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the Orthomyxoviridae (ortho myxo veride) family of viral pathogens.

The Spanish Flu

Known as the Spanish Flu or La Grippe, in 1918 three waves of H1-N1 spread throughout the world at a staggering pace. The majority of those afflicted by La Grippe recovered fully, but in some patients, the disease worsened to pneumonia, against which modern medicine at the time had no viable defense.

Victims of this lethal stage of infection developed a bluish cast to their faces, which would ultimately turn purple or brown. Once a victim’s feet turned black, death was generally only hours away.

Viral Infections Globally

The Spanish flu invaded cities across the globe in an almost random fashion, hopscotching around the world without apparent logic or predictable demographic progression.

Boston Mass, Freetown in Sierra Leone, Brest France—In San Francisco, over 3500 pneumonia cases were admitted to area hospitals, with over 900 fatalities. Everywhere in the United States public gatherings were banned. Schools, theaters, churches and businesses were shut down by public decree. Nearly everyone wore face masks, yet nothing seemed to arrest the spread of Influenza.

Considered the greatest single-most demographic shock that mankind has ever experienced, in the two years that Spanish Flu ravaged the earth, one-fifth of the world’s population became infected, with an estimated mortality of 50 to 100 million lives.

In one devastating year, Spanish Flu killed more people than Hitler, nuclear weapons and all worldwide terrorist attacks combined. In the end, despite frantic efforts to unlock its etiology and devise an effective cure, Spanish Flu disappeared from the human landscape as quickly as it had arrived.