1918 - Medicine

Medicine

A pandemic even more lethal than the Black Death of the mid-14th century sweeps through Europe, North America, and the Orient, as the European war winds down, having taken about 10 million lives.The first of the mysterious "flu" cases are reported March 11 at Fort Riley, Kansas, where more than 100 come down with what is diagnosed as pneumonia but is actually a viral infection (that the deadly mutating virus was transmitted from birds to humans will not be established until 2005). Some 48 men suffocate to death when their lungs fill with fluid, and other doughboys exposed to the virus through airborne droplets at Fort Riley are shipped overseas, infecting many of their comrades aboard ship and in France, where 1.5 million U.S. troops have been landed. The "Spanish" influenza affects 80 percent of the people in Spain, including Alfonso XIII, and quickly spreads throughout Europe, affecting mostly children and young adults with fatal outcomes, especially among previously healthy people aged 25 to 34 (the misnomer "Spanish" flu comes from the fact that Spain is neutral and does not censor news of the epidemic); the first U.S. cases since the outbreak at Fort Riley appear August 27 at Boston, where two sailors report to sick bay at Commonwealth Pier; by August 31 the Navy Receiving Ship has 106 flu cases. Many communities fail to institute isolation or quarantine measures. By mid-September the rapidly mutating flu virus has spread all over the East Coast, and by October 1 some 12,000 Americans have died of flu and related bacterial infections, most of them within a few days because the virus has destroyed the air sacs in their lungs. Viruses cannot be seen with existing microscopes, and scientists search in vain for an anti-bacterial vaccine. Nearly 25 percent of Americans fall ill, 195,000 die in October, schools are closed, parades and Liberty Loan rallies banned, and hospitals jammed. Emergency tent hospitals go up throughout America as the epidemic taxes regular hospital facilities. Coffin supplies are exhausted at Baltimore and Washington, and before the pandemic ends next year some 675,000 Americans will have died, including 43,000 servicemen. In many countries, trolley conductors, store clerks, and others wear masks to avoid contracting the flu, but the cloth masks are porous and provide little or no protection; the flu will kill as many as 50 million people worldwide by the end of next year.

Typhus takes a heavy toll in Galicia, the Ukraine, and the Black Sea region (see 1917). The International Red Cross helps fight the disease.

Some 46 percent of fracture cases in the U.S. Army result in permanent disability, chiefly by amputation, and 12 percent of fracture cases are fatal (see 1937).

The alkaloid drug ergotamine is extracted from the ergot fungus Claviceps purpura (see 1808). Useful in small doses as a muscle and blood vessel contractant, the drug will be used to treat migraine attacks and induce abortion (see ergonovine, 1935).