In the context of renewed interest in the 1918-1919 flu pandemic as a result of the development of COVID-19, this paper presents a reflection from the point of view of the social history of medicine ...on the transformation that the erroneously named “Spanish flu” brought to the working environment of health professionals in Spain, combining what happened in Madrid and in the country as a whole. Using as our sources monographs and the principal professional scientific journals of physicians, pharmacists and veterinarians, together with a selection from the general press and documentation from both houses of Parliament, we show how the daily activity of doctors was marked by the escalation of their clinical work as well as a considerable deployment of laboratory research in order to establish the aetiology of the flu and to prepare specific therapeutic and prophylactic measures. We show the difficulties this work encountered, and the interest of pharmacists and veterinarians in reproducing this new aspect of science and competing with doctors to achieve greater involvement in the bacteriological fight against infectious diseases. The paper also points out how, faced by the difficulty of controlling the pandemic, a section of the medical profession turned to the socioeconomic inequalities (poor working and living conditions, overcrowding, shortage and cost of food, medicine and basic necessities) in the working population and shortcomings in health care to explain its extreme seriousness, and proposed scientific medical and general measures to correct the situation in the future.
The 2019 novel coronavirus disease pandemic poses a serious threat. While its short-term effects are evident, its long-term consequences are a matter of analysis. In this work, the existence of ...long-lasting negative effects derived from exposure in utero to a great pandemic -1918 influenza pandemic- is analysed for the Argentine case.
Outcomes of interest include educational achievement and unemployment status in adulthood -50 years after the pandemic. Based on a regression analysis, temporal differences in the spread of the pandemic and between close birth cohorts are exploited.
The results indicate a significant reduction in educational achievement for people exposed in utero to the pandemic. In the region with the highest incidence of cases (Noroeste), this reduction is 0.5 years of education. There are no significant changes in the chances of being unemployed. In the context of climate change, these results constitute a call of attention for the implementation of child protection policies from gestation.
The influenza epidemic of 1918 was one of the worst medical disasters in human history, taking close to thirty million lives worldwide in less than a year, including more than 500,000 in the United ...States. What made this pandemic even more frightening was the fact that it occurred when death rates for most common infectious diseases were diminishing. Still, an epidemic is not merely a medical crisis; it has sociological, psychological, and political dimensions as well. In Influenza and Inequality, Patricia J. Fanning examines these other dimensions and brings to life this terrible episode of epidemic disease by tracing its path through the town of Norwood, Massachusetts. By 1918, Norwood was a small, ethnically diverse, industrialized, and stratified community. Ink, printing, and tanning factories were owned by wealthy families who lived privileged lives. These industries attracted immigrant laborers who made their homes in several ethnic neighborhoods and endured prejudice and discrimination at the hands of native residents. When the epidemic struck, the immigrant neighborhoods were most affected; a fact that played a significant role in the town’s response—with tragic results. This close analysis of one town’s struggle illuminates how even wellintentioned elite groups may adopt and implement strategies that can exacerbate rather than relieve a medical crisis. It is a cautionary tale that demonstrates how social behavior can be a fundamental predictor of the epidemic curve, a community’s response to crisis, and the consequences of those actions.
The 1918 influenza pandemic was characterized by multiple epidemic waves. We investigated reactive social distancing, a form of behavioral response where individuals avoid potentially infectious ...contacts in response to available information on an ongoing epidemic or pandemic. We modelled its effects on the three influenza waves in the United Kingdom. In previous studies, human behavioral response was modelled by a Power function of the proportion of recent influenza mortality in a population, and by a Hill function, which is a function of the number of recent influenza mortality. Using a simple epidemic model with a Power function and one common set of parameters, we provided a good model fit for the observed multiple epidemic waves in London boroughs, Birmingham and Liverpool. We further applied the model parameters from these three cities to all 334 administrative units in England and Wales and including the population sizes of individual administrative units. We computed the Pearson's correlation between the observed and simulated for each administrative unit. We found a median correlation of 0.636, indicating that our model predictions are performing reasonably well. Our modelling approach is an improvement from previous studies where separate models are fitted to each city. With the reduced number of model parameters used, we achieved computational efficiency gain without over-fitting the model. We also showed the importance of reactive behavioral distancing as a potential non-pharmaceutical intervention during an influenza pandemic. Our work has both scientific and public health significance.
The Spanish influenza pandemic in the years 1918-1920 was the largest and most tragic pandemic of infectious disease in human history. Deciphering the structure of the virus (including the ...determination of complete genome sequence) of this pandemic and the phylogenetic analysis and explanation of its virulence became possible thanks to molecular genetic analysis of the virus isolated from the fixed and frozen lung tissue of influenza victims who died in 1918 and were buried frozen in Alaska and Spitsbergen. Epidemiological data from the course of this pandemic in Poland have not been previously published. For analysis, we used source materials such as clinical studies and case reports of doctors fighting against the pandemic and registries of influenza cases in units of the Polish Army and military hospitals. Clinically, the pandemic of 1918 was characterized by the same symptoms and course as influenza in other years. Pathologically, the disease was similar to the other pandemic, in that the destruction was mostly limited to the respiratory tract. The "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 took place in Poland in 3 epidemic waves. The peaks of morbidity and mortality occurred in the capital, Warsaw, in December 1918 and in December 1919 to January 1920. It is estimated that throughout the pandemic period of 1918-1920 in Poland, 200 000 to 300 000 people died.
La gripe española en Cuba Leidelén Esquivel Sosa; Lumey Ávalos Quintero
Acta médica del Centro : revista del Hospital Clínico Quirúrgico "Arnaldo Milián Castro",
07/2022, Letnik:
16, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Introducción: desde la antigüedad las epidemias ponen en riesgo a los seres humanos. De la influenza de 1918 se tienen mejores detalles; sin embargo, en Cuba muchos datos no se describen con ...exactitud. Se establece la incertidumbre ante la lectura de artículos no coincidentes. Objetivo: describir hechos históricos alrededor de la gripe española en Cuba basados en artículos publicados no coincidentes. Métodos: se utilizó el método histórico-lógico, con énfasis en la inducción-deducción, mediante búsqueda bibliográfica con buscador de Google y bases de datos LILACS, Scopus, SciELO, Pubmed y Medigraphic. Se utilizaron 16 referencias que se consideraron de mayor claridad y exactitud. Desarrollo: Martínez-Fortún, en sus recopilaciones, refiere, en el mes de septiembre de 1918, la presencia de una epidemia grave de “grippe”; la Revista Bohemia la refirió a inicios de octubre. Según el archivo de Manzanillo desde el 10 de octubre comenzó en esta ciudad el rápido y alarmante desarrollo de la epidemia. El día 6 de octubre Martínez-Fortún mostró preocupación por el atraque de un barco con casos de influenza y el periódico mexicano Excélsior de ese día informó que la tripulación del vapor español Alfonso XII, que se encontraba atracado en el puerto de La Habana, estaba infectada. El mismo Martínez Fortún describió equívocamente este hecho en otro texto y otro día, el 18, lo que otros autores reprodujeron. Conclusiones: existe evidencia de que el buque que entró a Cuba fue el Alfonso XII, el 6 de octubre de 1918, con casos de la gripe que se unieron a los ya existentes en la isla.
The 1918 influenza pandemic spread rapidly around the globe, leading to high mortality and social disruption. The countermeasures available to mitigate the pandemic were limited and relied on ...nonpharmaceutical interventions. Over the past 100 years, improvements in medical care, influenza vaccines, antiviral medications, community mitigation efforts, diagnosis, and communications have improved pandemic response. A number of gaps remain, including vaccines that are more rapidly manufactured, antiviral drugs that are more effective and available, and better respiratory protective devices.
A large literature has documented links between harmful early-life exposures and laterlife health and socioeconomic deficits. These studies, however, have typically been unable to examine the ...possibility that these shocks are transmitted to the next generation. Our study uses representative survey data from the United States to trace the impacts of in utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic on the outcomes of the children and grandchildren of those affected. We find evidence of multigenerational effects on educational, economic, and health outcomes.
In the time of COVID-19, many are turning to the authors of epidemic and pandemic history in the hope that they will do for us what medical historian Henry E. Sigerist did for his generation in the ...dark days of worldwide depression and World War II, that is, to give us perspective on the present by allowing us to see it through the lenses of time and social evolution.1 With this in mind, AJPH has encouraged historical essays to help place the COVID19 pandemic in perspective. In this issue four such essays, along with five accompanying editorial comments, address the pre-vaccine challenges with which we have already been grappling: attempting to understand the complex epidemiology of the pandemic and hoping to learn important lessons from it, trying to collect data to solidly ground epidemiological analyses, pursuing social mitigation measures in the hope of buy-in and success, and facing head on the implications in terms of national reputation of our country's substantial failures thus far in dealing with COVID-19. Morabia (p. 438) focuses on the US Public Health Service's 1918-1919 house-to-house morbidity and mortality survey to understand how that survey was done and what data were collected for analysis. Because the survey included questions about economic status, race, and crowding, findings indicated that incidence and mortality were higher among the poor and that in many areas Whites were apparently more infected but died less than people of color.
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