Spanish flu: the pandemic to end all pandemics?
February 20, 1919 and a reader has contacted the Editor of The Times to give advice on the most pressing matter of the day. “Sir, the simplest, easiest and cheapest precaution is to use salt water for gargling the throat and rinsing the nostrils,” he says, before adding, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with nose-rinsing techniques, “fill the hollow of the hand and ‘snuffle’ the mixture.”
For less sturdy readers, the Times doctor sums up the scientific consensus on defeating influenza: “The good effects of wine continue to be emphasised, and most agree in selecting port as the best of these,” he says. An advertisement in the paper extols the benefits of mustard baths.
The Spanish flu pandemic that began in 1918 was the gravest medical disaster of the 20th century, comparable in scale only to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Over the course of two winters, a third of the world’s population became infected with the H1N1 flu virus — the same subtype as the current swine flu. Propagated by troops leaving the trenches and exacerbated by those cold winters, it spread to every continent. Woodrow Wilson, the US President, suffered from its effects while negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. Gustav Klimt, the Austrian painter, died in the first wave, aged 55. As with swine flu today, the virus seemed, unusually, to affect the young, fit and healthy.
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