Influenza, 1918: "The Worst Epidemic the United States Has Ever Known."

Influenza, 1918: " The Worst Epidemic the United States Has Ever Known. " PBS On-Line, The American Experience. PBS/WGBH. Contributors: Alfred Crosby, PhD, and Jeff rey K. Taubenberger, MD. http://www.pbs. org/wgbh/amex/influenza/ Providing a brief overview of the major events, this Web site chronicles the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States. A basic introduction to the epidemic, it is designed for use by the general public, with a special emphasis as a source for educators. Particularly impressive is the commentary by Alfred Crosby, author of America ' s Forgotten Pandemic, and Jeff rey Taubenberger, pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, who recently discovered the cause of the devastating illness. The Web site works well, and is accurate in its facts. However, the site provides only a cursory glimpse of the great influenza pandemic, noting contributions of only a few significant physicians, including Surgeon General Rupert Blue and Victor Vaughan, MD. One major omission is the role of nurses and the nursing profession during the epidemic. The site is easily navigated, but there are some technical difficulties in accessing the audiotaped interviews (at least for this reviewer). Nonetheless, transcripts of these are available. The site contains a "Teacher's Guide" with suggested classroom activities, most useful perhaps, at the high school level. It also contains a map outlining the spread of the disease across the country in various time periods. However, the map moves too quickly and it is difficult to ascertain exactly what is happening and when. What is apparent is that within weeks from its late August onset, the devastating flu covered the entire nation. A bar graph of mortality rates by month is also included on the Web site, as is a timeline of events from March 1918 until January 1919. Again, only very few events are noted-leaving major gaps in the story. One interesting component of the Web site is the detail contained in "City Snapshots," which describes the situation in Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and includes several photographs of events in these select cities. The Web site could be expanded considerably. Of particular note, nurses such as Lillian Wald of Henry Street Settlement, Jane Delano of the American Red Cross, and Katherine Tucker of the Philadelphia Visiting Nurses and their work during the pandemic are missing. Also absent is the significant work of the American Red Cross, both at the national and local levels. More important, several major cities, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Seattle are not mentioned, nor is there any reference to how small towns across the country were aff ected. 1 Focusing on White America, the Web site does not discuss the story of Tuba City, Arizona, and the eff ect of the flu on the Navajo tribes living there. 2 Nor does it pay attention, with the exception of mentioning Brevig Mission, to the stories of devastation in small towns in Alaska, where physicians and nurses from Seattle were sent by ship to treat Alaska Natives. 3 Links include (1) another PBS site, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, (2) the Centers for Disease Control, and (3) the World Health Organization. While these are all excellent sources for contemporary issues related to influenza, they do not provide historical data. For an historical viewpoint, it would be more helpful to link to such sites as the National Library of Medicine for more on the history of medicine during the pandemic; the Red Cross archives that has a historical timeline of events during the flu; the National Archives and Records Administration, which has a large collection of Red Cross reports from the period (Record Group 75); the Lillian Wald papers at the New York Public Library, which provide an in-depth description of events in New York City; and the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, which has a significant collection of Visiting Nurse Association papers about Philadelphia and the flu. …