The Pandemic Century

by The Pandemic Century- One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria

  29 cities in July: V. Andreasen et al., “Epidemiologic Characterization of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Summer Wave in Copenhagen: Implications for Pandemic Control Strategies,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases 197, no. 2 (2008): 270–78.

  29 numbers of influenza cases: Petit and Bailie, A Cruel Wind, 85.

  29 form of Spanish influenza: Paul G. Woolley, “The Epidemic of Influenza at Camp Devens, MASS,” Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine 4, no. 6 (March 1919): 330–43.

  31 “dropping like flies . . . is horrible”: R. N. Grist, “Pandemic Influenza 1918,” British Medical Journal 2, no. 6205 (December 22, 1979): 1632–33.

  31 “but the Black Death”: John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York: Viking Penguin, 2004), 187–88.

  31 flowers of the same name: A. Abrahams et al., “A further investigation into influenzo-pneumococcal and influenzo-streptococcal septicaemia,” The Lancet 193, no. 4975 (July 5, 1919): 1–11.

  32 education in the United States: Barry D. Silverman, “William Henry Welch (1850–1934): The Road to Johns Hopkins,” Proceedings Baylor University Medical Center 24, no. 3 (2011): 236–42.

  32 “discoursed so excitingly”: “The Four Founding Physicians,” Johns Hopkins Medicine, accessed July 6, 2017, http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/history/history5.html.

  33 “buck the game”: Woolley, “The Epidemic of Influenza at Camp Devens, MASS.”

  33 “brain of an old epidemiologist”: Vaughan, A Doctor’s Memories, 383–84.

  34 “even for Dr. Welch”: Jim Duffy, “The Blue Death—Flu Epidemic of 1918,” Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Fall 2004, accessed July 6, 2017, http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2004/fall/prologues/index.html.

  34 the lobar variety: Woolley, “The Epidemic at Camp Devens, MASS.”

  34 cultured at autopsy: Jeffery K. Taubenberger et al., “The Pathology of Influenza Virus Infections,” Annual Review of Pathology 3 (2008): 499–522.

  35 “expansion of hospital space”: Barry, The Great Influenza, 190–91, 288.

  35 require red counterstains: Pfeiffer recommended Ziehl-Neelsen’s carbol-fuchsin stain. Pickett-Thomson Research Laboratory, ed., Annals of the Pickett-Thomson Research Laboratory 9 (London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox, 1924): 275.

  36 on September 27: Barry, The Great Influenza, 289–90.

  36 role in secondary infections: H. influenzae—also known as type b (Hib)—can cause many different kinds of infections ranging from mild ear infections, to severe bloodstream infections, to pneumonia. Hib meningitis is a particular danger to unvaccinated children, and even with treatment approximately one in twenty will die.

  38 refractory species for human influenzas: A. Sally Davis et al., “The Use of Nonhuman Primates in Research on Seasonal, Pandemic and Avian Influenza, 1893–2014,” Antiviral Research 117 (May 2015): 75–98.

  38 make it pathogenic: John M. Eyler, “The State of Science, Microbiology, and Vaccines Circa 1918,” Public Health Reports 3, no. 125 (2010): 27–36.

  39 streptococci and pneumococci: “Bacteriology of The ‘Spanish Influenza’ 1,” The Lancet 192, no. 4954 (August 10, 1918), 177.

  39 respiratory complications of influenza: Royal College of Physicians, London, “Prevention and Treatment of Influenza,” British Medical Journal 2, no. 3020 (November 16, 1918): 546.

  39 microbiology’s “lynchpin”: S. W. B. Newson, Infections and Their Control: A Historical Perspective (Los Angeles and London: Sage, 2009), 36.

  41 yellow fever: Erling Norrby, “Yellow Fever and Max Theiler: The Only Nobel Prize for a Virus Vaccine,” The Journal of Experimental Medicine 204, no. 12 (November 26, 2007): 2779–84.

  42 awarded the Nobel Prize: Myron G. Schultz et al., “Charles-Jules-Henri Nicolle,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 15, no. 9 (September 2009): 1519–22; Ludwik Gross, “How Charles Nicolle of the Pasteur Institute Discovered That Epidemic Typhus Is Transmitted by Lice: Reminiscences from My Years at the Pasteur Institute in Paris,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 93, no. 20 (October 1, 1996): 10539–40.

  44 people inoculated subcutaneously: C. Nicolle et al., “Quelques notions expérimentales sur le virus de la grippe,” Comptes Rendus de l’Académie Sciences 167 (1918 II): 607–10; C. Nicolle et al., “Recherches expérimentales sur la grippe,” Annales d’Institut Pasteur 33 (1919): 395.

  45 failure in this respect: Davis, Taubenberger, and Bray, “The use of nonhuman primates in research on seasonal, pandemic and avian influenza, 1893–2014.”

  46 patients dried up: The technique was discovered by Ernest Goodpasture at Vanderbilt University, but it was an Australian researcher and future Nobel Prize winner, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, who first applied the technique to growing influenza virus. F. M. Burnet, Changing Patterns: An Atypical Biography (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1968), 41, 90–91.

  47 disposed of at sea: C. R. Byerly, Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army During World War I (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 102–3.

  47 “and you won’t”: Nancy. K. Bristow, American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 101.

  48 did not show symptoms: “New York prepared for influenza siege,” New York Times, September 19, 1918, 11.

  48 a vaccine was imminent: “Vaccine for Influenza,” New York Evening Post, October 12, 1918, 8.

  49 he wired a colleague: Barry, The Great Influenza, 279.

  49 US Steel Company: John M. Eyler, “The State of Science, Microbiology, and Vaccines Circa 1918,” Public Health Reports 3, no. 125 (2010): 27–36.

  49 with a narrow mesh: “Battle Influenza Microbes, Noted Physician Warns,” Chicago Herald Examiner, October 6, 1918, 1.

  50 “big ally of the influenza”: “Spanish Influenza and the Fear of It,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 5, 1918, 12; “Stop the Senseless Influenza Panic,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 1918, 12.

  51 “a dreadful sight,” he concluded: Herbert French, “The clinical features of the influenza epidemic of 1918–19,” UK Ministry of Health, Report on the Pandemic of Influenza 1918–19 (London: HMSO, 1920), 66–109.

  51 “two to three thousand children”: Letter from Harry Whellock, Cape Province, South Africa, 10 November 1918. Mullocks sale item.

  51 “sexton to ring the bells”: A. E. Baumgardt to Richard Collier, May 28, 1972, Richard Collier Collection, Imperial War Museum. IWM 63/5/1.

  52 “drifting through the imagination”: Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Robin Buss (New York: Penguin Classics, 2002), 31.

  52 more or less equal numbers: John F. Bundage et al., “Deaths from Bacterial Pneumonia During 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 14, no. 8 (August 2008): 1193–99.

  53 excess respiratory deaths: Jeffery K. Taubenberger et al., “1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no. 1 (January 2006): 15–22.

  55 “antigenic shift”: T. Tumpey et al., “Characterization of the Reconstructed 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic Virus,” Science 310, no. 5745 (July 10, 2005): 77–80; J. K. Taubenberger et al., “Characterization of the 1918 Influenza Virus Polymerase Genes,” Nature 437, no. 7060 (October 6, 2005): 889–93.

  55 leap to humans: Ann H. Reid et al., “Evidence of an Absence: The Genetic Origins of the 1918 Pandemic Influenza Virus,” Nature Reviews. Microbiology 2, no. 11 (November 2004): 909–14.

  55 shortly before 1918: Michael Worobey et al., “Genesis and Pathogenesis of the 1918 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza A Virus,” Proceedings National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 22 (June 3, 2014): 8107–12.

  56 cannot be ruled out: The British virologist John Oxford has argued that such a reassortment could have occurred at Etaples in the winter of 1916–1917 when hundreds of soldiers at the camp were sickened by “purulent bronchitis.” As well as being crowded with troops en route to the Front, Etaples boasted its own piggeries, and many men also kept ducks
and geese as pets, meaning that all the ecological conditions were in place for the direct transfer of an avian flu virus to humans, or its reassortment with a mammalian flu virus first. Similarly, John Barry argues that the ecological conditions for a reassortment with a bird flu virus were in place in Haskell County, Kansas, a sparsely populated farming area three hundred miles to the west of Camp Funston, where people raised poultry and hogs. However, his suggestion that the epidemic at Camp Funston in March 1918 was a precursor of the Spanish flu is undermined by the fact that, unlike during the later autumn wave or the outbreak at Etaples in 1917, there were no reports of heliotrope cyanosis. Even more problematic for Barry’s theory is that in the summer of 1918, Copenhagen, and other northern European cites, suffered large flu outbreaks marked by unusual mortality in younger age groups—a hallmark of the later pandemic waves. Moreover, New York saw a similar wave of prepandemic flu activity in February–April 1918. According to the authors of the New York study, these findings are “inconsistent with the prevailing hypothesis of a spring 1918 Kansas origin, and . . . reopen the possibility that the virus had spread from Europe to New York City in the context of troop movement during World War I.” John S. Oxford, “The So-Called Great Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 May Have Originated in France in 1916,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B 356, 1416 (2001): 1857–59; John M. Barry, “The Site of Origin of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and its Public Health Implications,” Journal of Translational Medicine 2 (January 20, 2004): 3; Viggo Andreasen et al., “Epidemiologic Characterization of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Summer Wave in Copenhagen: Implications for Pandemic Control Strategies,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases 197, no. 2 (January 2008): 270–78; Donald R. Olson et al., “Epidemiological Evidence of an Early Wave of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New York City,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, no. 31 (August 2005): 11059–63.

  56 between 1913 and 1917: Worobey et al., “Genesis and Pathogenesis.”

  57 between 1889 and 1892: Kevin D. Patterson, Pandemic Influenza, 1700–1900: A Study in Historical Epidemiology (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986), 49–82.

  58 absorb oxygen in the lung: Taubenberger et al., “The Pathology of Influenza Virus Infections.”

  58 young soldiers or civilians: E. W. Goodpasture, “The Significance of Certain Pulmonary Lesions in Relation to the Etiology of Influenza,” American Journal of Medical Science 158 (1919): 863–70.

  59 “enormous extent of the disease”: “Remarks of Dr. William H. Welch, 1926,” Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

  59 bronchial epithelial cells: Terence M. Tumpey et al., “Characterization of the Reconstructed 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic Virus,” Science 310, no. 5745 (2005): 77–80.

  60 shortly after 1900: Worobey et al., “Genesis and Pathogenesis of the 1918 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza A Virus.”

  60 newer flu strains: Susanne L. Linderman et al., “Antibodies with ‘Original Antigenic Sin’ Properties Are Valuable Components of Secondary Immune Responses to Influenza Viruses,” PLOS Pathogens 12, no. 8 (2016): e1005806.

  60 adults at the time: David M. Morens et al., “The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Lessons for 2009 and the Future,” Critical Care Medicine 38, no. 4 suppl. (April 2010): e10–20.

  60 “possibilities for pandemic emergence”: Jefferey K. Taubenberger et al., “Influenza: The Once and Future Pandemic,” Public Health Reports 125, no. 3 (2010): 16–26.

  61 “natural history of infectious disease”: F. M. Burnet, Natural History of Infectious Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953).

  61 emergence of pandemics: Burnet, Changing Patterns.

  61 extensive bronchopneumonia: F. M. Burnet, “Influenza Virus ‘A’ Infections of Cynomolgus Monkeys,” Australian Journal of Experimental Biology and Medicine 19 (1941): 281–90.

  62 Burnet concluded: F. M. Burnet and E. Clark, Influenza: a survey of the last fifty years. Monographs from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Research in Pathology and Medicine, no. 4 (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1942).

  CHAPTER II: PLAGUE IN THE CITY OF ANGELS

  63 as “double pneumonia”: Walter M. Dickie and California State Board of Health, “Reports on Plague in Los Angeles, 1924–25,” 11–30, HM 72874, The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

  64 Overcrowding was rife: Arthur J. Viseltear, “The Pneumonic Plague Epidemic of 1924 in Los Angeles,” Yale Journal of Biology and Experimental Medicine 1 (1974): 40–54.

  64 “a city without slums”: William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 3.

  65 “safety of it”: Mark Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900–1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1976), 180.

  65 “double pneumonia”: Dickie, “Reports on Plague in Los Angeles, 1924–25.”

  66 “coarse rhonchi”: Emil Bogen, “The Pneumonic Plague in Los Angeles,” California and Western Medicine (February 1925): 175–76.

  66 “marked cyanosis”: “The Pneumonic Plague in Los Angeles,” 175–76.

  66 “L.S.” or “G.S.”: California State Board of Health, Special Bulletin, no. 46, “Pneumonic Plague, Report of an Outbreak at Los Angeles, California, October–November, 1924,” Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1926.

  67 he was dead: Dickie, “Reports on Plague in Los Angeles, 1924–25.”

  67 dealing with plague: Bogen, “Pneumonic Plague in Los Angeles”; Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 176–82.

  67 bacterium of plague: Dickie, “Reports on Plague in Los Angeles, 1924–25.”

  68 “Beautiful but damned”: Frank Feldinger, A Slight Epidemic: The Government Cover-Up of Black Plague in Los Angeles (Silver Lake Publishing Kindle edition, 2008), location 473.

  70 other organic material: “USGS Circular 1372, Plague,” accessed May 11, 2016, http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1372/.

  70 as many as 50 million: Ole Jørgen Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2004), 382.

  70 “laid hands on their belongings”: John Kelly, The Great Mortality (New York and London: Harper Perennial, 2006), 22.

  71 “proud city of tomorrow”: Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 182.

  71 eradicated from California: According to the San Francisco–based bacteriologist Karl F. Meyer, the statement was made by Colby. W. E. Carter and Vernon Link, “Unpublished biography of Karl F. Meyer and related papers, written and compiled by William E. Carter and Vernon B. Link, 1956–1963,” Sixth interview, 199, UCSF Library, Archives, and Special Collections, MSS 63–1. Hereafter “Carter MSS.”

  72 evading predators: Marilyn Chase, The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco (New York: Random House, 2003), 160.

  72 number of ectoparasites: In 1898, Paul-Louis Simond, a French researcher based in Karachi, succeeded in transmitting plague from an infected to an uninfected rat by allowing fleas harvested from a cat to feed on the diseased rat, but other experts questioned his methods, casting doubt on his findings. The result was that it was not until 1914, when two British researchers at the Lister Institute repeated Simond’s experiment under more rigorous conditions, that flea-rat transmission of plague was unequivocally accepted. Edward A. Crawford, “Paul-Louis Simond and His Work on Plague,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 39, no. 3 (1996): 446–58.

  72 interepidemic periods: The first person to posit the link with marmots was the Russian medical researcher Mikhail Edouardovich Beliavsky. Examining an outbreak in 1894 of bubonic plague at Aksha, on the Russian-Chinese border, Beliavsky argued that the Siberian marmot, or tarbagan, a large rodent hunted by native Mongols and Buryats, might be the carrier of plague, and that the disease spread to humans when they skinned the animal. Four years later, another Russian researcher, Danilo Zabolotny, reached the same conclusion while investigatin
g an outbreak of pneumonic plague in eastern Mongolia. See Christos Lynteris, Ethnographic Plague: Configuring Disease on the Chinese-Russian Frontier (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

  73 infected with Y. pestis: William B. Wherry, “Plague among the Ground Squirrels of California,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases 5, no. 5 (1908): 485–506.

  73 “(Citellus beecheyi) of California”: Chase, Barbary Plague, 189. Cittelus beechyi has since been renamed Otospermophilus beecheyi.

  73 1906 San Francisco outbreak: In 1914 researchers at the Lister Institute in London demonstrated that plague bacilli multiply and form a block in the proventriculus of X. cheopis. This block prevents the ingested blood from reaching the flea’s midgut, causing the flea to starve. The resulting increase in the number of feeding attempts by blocked fleas, combined with regurgitation of ingested blood and infectious material from the blockage, makes them dangerous vectors for humans. However, as these blockages can take twelve to sixteen days to form, X. cheopis is not thought to be infectious for long enough to be a factor in epizootics. Rebecca J. Eisen et al., “Early-Phase Transmission of Yersinia pestis by Unblocked Fleas as a Mechanism Explaining Rapidly Spreading Plague Epizootics,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, no. 42 (2006): 15380–85.

  73 “is in the same way”: McCoy, “Plague Among the Ground Squirrels in America,” Journal of Hygiene 10, no. 4 (1910–1912): 589–601.

  74 Southern Pacific Railroad: Wherry, “Plague Among the Ground Squirrels of California.”

  75 “has been removed”: Meyer, “The Ecology of Plague,” Medicine 21, no. 2 (May 1941): 143–74 (147).

  75 “the basic design is unknown”: P. C. C. Garnham, “Distribution of Wild-Rodent Plague,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2 (1949): 271–78.

  76 “hanging over our heads”: W. H. Kellogg, “An Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague,” American Journal of Public Health 10, no. 7 (July 1920): 599–605.

  77 “the presence of plague”: J. N. Hays, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 184–85.