While coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic threatens global community lives in 2020, a century ago, Americans endured loss of life to smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, typhoid, measles – and the forgotten, short-lived Spanish influenza epidemic, so awful, that people buried the memory of it with their dead.

During the summer and fall of 1918, American soldiers who fought in France and Germany during WWI returned to Camp Devon in Boston, Mass., with typical symptoms of “la grippe,” high fever, sore throat and headache. Camp Devon’s hospital was soon filled to capacity with soldiers coughing bloody sputum, and their lungs filled with fluid that turned them blue from pneumonia before they died. Known as “Spanish influenza,” the disease quickly spread throughout the population by the simple act of coughing in public.

On Sept. 11, two civilians dropped dead on a street corner in Quincy, Mass. The disease quickly spread from Boston to New York and Philadelphia by passengers who used the railroad. Patients who contracted the illness died within hours of a doctor’s diagnosis.

While flu cases and deaths made news in New York City, the government made no plans to halt the draft –instead, President Woodrow Wilson drafted an additional 13 million recruits for the war effort. Rumors suggested that Germans initiated the disease through germ warfare.

Despite attempts to quarantine the sick in Philadelphia, patients who contracted the disease suffered nosebleeds and high fever that made them delirious, collapsing their lungs leading to their death. As the death toll quickly mounted, coffins were stacked three-high on porches prior to burial. When undertakers could no longer make enough coffins to meet the demand, trenches were dug to bury the dead in mass graves.

The disease led to a national crisis – in Washington, D.C., the government banned all public gatherings, closed city schools and saloons and encouraged the public to wear gauze face masks to filter the air they breathed.

In their quest to find a cure, the medical profession was unsure whether the disease was a bacteria or a virus. Assuming the disease was a bacterial infection – the vaccine they produced and distributed failed. Spanish influenza was a virus.

Out of desperation to fight the disease, the general public found its own cure through folk medicine – home remedies that included the inhalation of camphor and mothballs, swallowing teaspoons of turpentine or kerosene with sugar, or the use of commercial preparations on the market, like Beaver Oil or mentholated products. Though home remedies didn’t work, everyone smelled “medicated.”

In September 1918, 12,000 Americans died of Spanish Influenza – 195,000 in October and 30 million worldwide. Vigorous healthy men had a 50/50 chance of survival, while the very young, the weak and the very old were most vulnerable. By the time Armistice Day was declared on Nov. 11, cases of influenza began to drop, with fewer cases reported. While the number of susceptible victims waned, those who survived developed immunity.

Some facts about Spanish influenza

The following appeared as an advertisement in the Reading Times, Oct. 9, 1918 –

“Spanish” influenza is a serious matter though something of a mystery. It probably originated in the ranks of the German Army and in prison camps. It no doubt spread from the southward through Spain and northward to Holland, France, England and Scandinavian countries. America was free from it until Aug. 12, 1918, when a Norwegian steamer arrived to an Atlantic port, having had over 200 cases on the voyage. Whether this marks the entry of the epidemic or not, the fact remains that Spanish influenza is here and is a serious menace, much like the familiar ‘Grippe.’

The disease is not alarming in itself if proper precautions are taken. But without care, the high fever and likelihood of pneumonia to follow make it extremely dangerous. The Surgeon-General of the Army recently issued the following rules by which the public may guard against the spread of this subtle enemy:

Rules to avoid

respiratory disease

1. Avoid needless crowding – influenza is a crowd disease.

2. Smother your cough and sneezes –others do not want the germs, which you would throw away.

3. Your nose, not your mouth, was made to breathe through – get the habit.

4. Remember the three C’s – a clear mouth, clear skin, clean clothes.

5. Try to keep cool when you walk and warm when you ride and sleep.

6. Open the windows-always at home at night: at the office when practicable.

7. Food will win the war if you give it a chance – help by choosing and chewing your food well.

8. Your fate may be in your hands – wash your hands before eating.

9. Don’t let the waste products of digestion accumulate – drink a glass of water or two on getting up.

10. Don’t use a napkin, towel, spoon, fork, glass or cup, which has been used by another person and not washed.

11. Avoid tight clothes, tight shoes, tight gloves – make nature your ally, not your prisoner.

12. When the air is pure, breathe all of it you can – breathe deeply.