In 1918, the deadliest virus in human History struck worldwide with hardly any warning. A victim of the Spanish flu could wake up healthy and fall down dead the same day. In the United States, so many people fell ill that schools and churches closed. There werent enough healthy doctors and nurses to care for the sick, or enough healthy gravediggers to bury the dead. When U.S. troops joined World War I that year, they couldnt have imagined that more soldiers would die from the flu than fighting. The Spanish flu claimed between 50 million and 100 million lives globally in less than a year. Now, less than a century later, new strains of bird flu are killing people in Asia in much the same way. Are we on the verge of another deadly pandemic?
Veteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease.
An account of the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918, which took the lives of millions of people around the world, examines its causes, its impact on early twentieth-century society, and the lasting implications of the crisis.
In this powerful book, filled with black and white photographs, nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines the history, science, and impact of this great scourge--and the possibility for another worldwide pandemic today.
This 2003 edition includes a preface discussing the then recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and the SARS epidemic.
On a global, multidisciplinary scale, the book seeks to apply the insights of a wide range of social and medical sciences to an investigation of the pandemic.
The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns.
Sheds new light on what the WHO described as "the single most devastating infectious disease outbreak ever recorded," focusing on social control, gender, class, religion, national identity, and military medicine's reactions to the pandemic.
In this volume, Susan Kingsley Kent presents an overview of the disease, detailing its symptoms, tracking its spread, and offering insights into the medical community's understanding of and reaction to the pandemic.
It also created the true "lost generation." Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology and economics, Pale Rider masterfully recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity.
... “When the light did finally come I was some specimen of misery—couldn't breathe without an excruciating cough and there was no hope in me. ... as evidenced in the faces of Charles Kinsman (inset) and Frank Wilson in Mayer, Arizona.