Origins of the 1918 Flu Pandemic
source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5222069
-
-
- ivxx
- added this
It's not often that you find countries fighting to claim credit for the birth of an epidemic. Take syphilis, a disease which has infected millions -- man, woman and child alike. If you were in Italy when the disease first hit Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, you called it the "French pox." If you were in France, you called it the "disease of Naples." Or, you could blame it on the Native Americans. Voltaire did. He said Columbus' crew brought it back from the New World.
But when it comes to the deadliest pandemic in history, scientists from two superpowers are calling dibs rather than pointing fingers.
Everyone seems to agree that the 1918 flu epidemic, known as the "Spanish flu," didn't start in Spain. (That name probably came from the fact that only Spain was publishing news about local flu epidemics; there was a blackout on news that might lower morale in Germany, Britain and France.) American experts, such as Jeffrey Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and historian John M. Barry, back the theory that the virus, which eventually killed 50 million people, got its start in America's heartland.
The made-in-America version goes like this: Loring Miner, a Haskell County, Kansas, doctor raised the first warning, reporting an "influenza of a severe type" circulating in the area. Haskell County boys may have then carried the virus to a Kansas army camp. From there, the virus caught a ride with tens of thousands of young soldiers on their way to Europe.
John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary's School of Medicine in London, holds to a different theory: the British Empire nurtured the disease.
The British army had an enormous training camp set up in Etaples, France. On any given day, 100,000 soldiers were milling around. Many were on their way to World War I's Western Front; others, wounded, sick, and often prisoners, were on their way back. The camp had 24 hospitals alone and a team of fearful -- but curious -- pathologists. They recorded post mortems on everything that came their way. "They were worried, even at that stage, in 1916, about the possibility of infectious disease decimating the British army, as had happened in the past with typhus and cholera," says Oxford.
Story continued at link...
But when it comes to the deadliest pandemic in history, scientists from two superpowers are calling dibs rather than pointing fingers.
Everyone seems to agree that the 1918 flu epidemic, known as the "Spanish flu," didn't start in Spain. (That name probably came from the fact that only Spain was publishing news about local flu epidemics; there was a blackout on news that might lower morale in Germany, Britain and France.) American experts, such as Jeffrey Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and historian John M. Barry, back the theory that the virus, which eventually killed 50 million people, got its start in America's heartland.
The made-in-America version goes like this: Loring Miner, a Haskell County, Kansas, doctor raised the first warning, reporting an "influenza of a severe type" circulating in the area. Haskell County boys may have then carried the virus to a Kansas army camp. From there, the virus caught a ride with tens of thousands of young soldiers on their way to Europe.
John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary's School of Medicine in London, holds to a different theory: the British Empire nurtured the disease.
The British army had an enormous training camp set up in Etaples, France. On any given day, 100,000 soldiers were milling around. Many were on their way to World War I's Western Front; others, wounded, sick, and often prisoners, were on their way back. The camp had 24 hospitals alone and a team of fearful -- but curious -- pathologists. They recorded post mortems on everything that came their way. "They were worried, even at that stage, in 1916, about the possibility of infectious disease decimating the British army, as had happened in the past with typhus and cholera," says Oxford.
Story continued at link...
