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Strange perhaps, but I never heard it referred to as "Spanish Flu" until fairly recently. My parents lived through it and never used the term. It was always "The Great Influenza Epidemic" or some such. There probably always was a Spanish Flu label but people were dying in droves plus the war casualties and wartime diseases such took a huge toll that it just defied description.
Why was Spanish Flu not mentioned more in the 1920's?
It probably was -- in the Twenties, but only among those who lived through it.
My parents were born in the mid-Twenties, and I don't recall them ever discussing the Spanish influenza, but my great-grandmother, grandmother, and her half-bother (my great-uncle) were born in 1873, 1896, and 1904 respectively, I and I can recall their stories of the epidemic on a number of occasions.
It also needs to be recognized that polio had displaced the flu as the most prominently-perceived health threat in my parents' day.
While you could show pictures of children on crutches or in iron lungs from polio (remember those), what pictures can you show of someone with the flu? People blowing their noses? Not quite as graphic or fear inspiring as the polio images, or as in today with pictures of kids with measles, chicken pox, or elderly with shingles.
Strange perhaps, but I never heard it referred to as "Spanish Flu" until fairly recently. My parents lived through it and never used the term. It was always "The Great Influenza Epidemic" or some such. There probably always was a Spanish Flu label but people were dying in droves plus the war casualties and wartime diseases such took a huge toll that it just defied description.
I heard about it.. or knew the name.. just didnt realize during WW1.but there seems to be an awful lot about it referred to as SpanishFlu.
Strange perhaps, but I never heard it referred to as "Spanish Flu" until fairly recently. My parents lived through it and never used the term. It was always "The Great Influenza Epidemic" or some such. There probably always was a Spanish Flu label but people were dying in droves plus the war casualties and wartime diseases such took a huge toll that it just defied description.
The 1918 flu moved from the East coast to the West coast. People in the west knew it was coming. There were towns that tried to keep any strangers out. And remember, though, at that time people didn't know the flu was caused by "germs" or even how it was spread.
Louis Pasteur’s pasteurization experiment illustrates the fact that the spoilage of liquid was caused by particles in the air rather than the air itself. These experiments were important pieces of evidence supporting the idea of Germ Theory of Disease.
The more formal experiments on the relationship between germ and disease were conducted by Louis Pasteur between 1860 and 1864.
So I think half a century later the germ theory of disease was well known to the general public.
Odd it's still called the Spanish flu since many now believe it started in Kansas and others say it started in China.
I was at a museum just yesterday that had a WW I display. They had a section about the flu. According to this display, it started in Kansas and got named "Spanish Flu" when the king of Spain got it. Of 21 residents of Otoe County, Nebraska who died in the service in the war, only 7 died of battlefield wounds while 14 died of flu.
There was very little anyone could do to fight the flu back then, and no one likes to talk about any disease that can strike anyone at any time. Talking about it, in many folk's minds, might be calling it down upon them.
My father talked about the Spanish flu to me when I was young, and he was a survivor. His older brother died from it as a 2-year old and he was just a toddler.
The term 'Spanish' wasn't as universal as the disease. The Spanish called it the German flu, and the Germans called it the Russian flu.
It was a rare virulence that was so lethal that the virus finally had to die out because it had no more victims to spread it. More victims lived than died, but the disease left many so weakened that they succumbed to other disease like pneumonia after they had survived the flu itself.
The sudden high fever left many of the survivors blinded or deafened, and some developed joint diseases as after-effects. But once anyone caught it and survived, they were immune to it when it came around again.
Last edited by banjomike; 06-26-2017 at 08:13 PM..
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