Proposial

I have decided to write my articles on the flu epidemic of 1918, focusing on the effects of Baltimore, and the surrounding areas, as well as the world. I will include areas such as Ft. Meade because of the significance to the epidemic known as The Blue Death. This is an important article of the magnitude of death, even being called the "granddaddy" of all flu epidemics (Donald Burke, http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/magazine/archive/Mag_Fall04/prologues/index.html).

I am confident that I will have no issue finding articles or other resources to work off of. After typing in "1918 flu epidemic" in a search engine I immediately found pages of information on this epidemic, many of which used Baltimore news papers as sources. I hope you enjoy reading my post as much as I (hopefully) enjoy writing them.

Finally!

I've finally renewed my Langsdale Library card, and cleared some time. Look forward to post soon!

When was the last time you used a card catalog?

Me and Sandra (finally) made it over to Enoch Pratt Library. I'm impressed at the amount of stuff they had there, they even had the records of fires from 1904. However, I must admit that after all the hype I expected the Maryland room to be much bigger than it was.

I used the card catalog yesterday and I found some good statistics on deaths from the flu in 1918 in MD and Baltimore. Oddly enough the flu pandemic was not the biggest killer in Baltimore, pneumonia was. I haven't analysed the evidence yet to determine if they're related.

Today Sandra & I went back to the library and used the microfilm of old Sun newspapers to find more information. She was obviously more prepared than I, because she knew exactly where to look. I just looked over months (and the month before & after) when the deaths where highest. Unfortunately the hot topic of the news in 1918 was the end of the first world war. I was able to find some good information, but nothing nearly as good as the health information from the day before.

I'll scan in all of my papers I printed tomorrow, and I'll post some of the pictures online tomorrow night.

All of the articles and research I’ve been gathering over the past couple of weeks is coming together. The resources I’ve depended on are the historical Sun papers, Baltimore & Maryland annual health reports (1919, 1944), and today I just added some very worthwhile videos from YouTube. Tonight you will see my first substantial post, relying heavy on statistics.

Gobble Gobble Gobble

The influenza pandemic of 1918 was such a major event that officials, historians, and the media still compare current influenza and other disease upsurges to that of 1918. Later dubbed “The Spanish Flu/Influenza”, it reached across the world infecting somewhere around 25 percent of the world, and killing between 10 and 20 percent of those infected (Baltimore Sun). In the entire United States about 1.76 percent of the population became infected by influenza in 1918; Maryland was about average to the country with a 1.8 percent infection rate however, Baltimore was higher [see below] (Health Dept. of Baltimore).

Reports of The Spanish Flu start as early as 1913, and the current “outbreak” of influenza, H1N1, is believed to be a strain of the old virus (Baltimore Sun). The peak year is, without a doubt, 1918, so that year will be the focus year for this report. While focusing in on influenza in Maryland & Baltimore we can break the year into two timelines, “pre-epidemic” and “epidemic” (MD Board of Health). Between January & August 1918 the flu was not yet prevalent, and there was no significant increase in death from disease, 190 out of every 100,000 died from either the flu or pneumonia [a complication from influenza]; however, in the “epidemic” period from September to December 1918 saw an increase of over 3 fold to 684/100,000 totaling at 1,741 for the city that year (Health Dept. of Baltimore). Of the total death rate in Maryland, The Spanish Flu [and not pneumonia] accounted for 14 percent (MD Board of Health).

October saw the worst of the death. By early September a “sharp outbreak” of the flu occurred at Ft. McHenry, Camp Meade, and other military camps outside of Baltimore (MD Board of Health). The amount of troops that died in military camps from the flu in October alone, nearly matched that in the entire year of combat fatalities (Baltimore Sun). Consequently, because of the close relation to the military camps nearly 24,000 residents and non-residents [people living in Baltimore for less than a year] reported having The Spanish Flu during the epidemic period (MD Board of Health).

"During that particular time, it was just popular to have the flu."

We were encouraged to find a person to interview, if possible, for research. Being that my project is based on events that happened in 1918, I don’t know anyone who was alive, much less from Baltimore from then. However, I was inspired after another student uploaded his interviews to Youtube. I thought that maybe someone else may of done the work for me, I could some interviews of the Spanish Flu of 1918 from historians, doctors, and survivors, and/or and maybe I’d find a snippet or two of something concerning the flu of 1918. What luck! Not only did I find two very different, fantastic videos about the effects of the Flu in Baltimore, one of them even has Andre Braugher (Homicide) doing interviews. The first video is “Standing in the Safety Zone” presented by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is based in Baltimore (if you’re wondering, to be in the “safety zone” you must get a flu shot). This video hopes to persuade the public, particularly the elderly, to get their annual flu shot by interviewing survivors of the 1918 epidemic. The other video, “Hospitals ‘Full-Up’: Remembering the 1918 Flu Epidemic”, was created by Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies. This video asks if current medial centers are prepaired for a biological attack by examining the effects of the 1918 flu. “Full-up” doesn’t mention it much in the video, but most, if not all of the newspapers they posted as sources are from The Baltimore Sun. I came across most of them in The Enoch Pratt Library’s sun archive when I was gathering research documents.

Both videos make one thing clear, 1918 wasn't that long ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNP9KwFMU6Y (embedding was disabled for this video)

Depending on where you look, sources will say that anywhere from one in four to one half of the world’s population was infected with the flu in 1918 & 1919. No matter which rate is correct, or wither it be somewhere in between, The Spanish Flu is the worst influenza outbreak in history (PBS.org). The flu outbreak was so bad; it actually lowered the average life span by 13 years.

About 65 percent of all Spanish Influenza fatalities happened in October of 1918. Police officers, Doctors, gravediggers, and nurses where also infected with the flu, and consequently, about 25 percent of public safety officials failed to report for duty. (All information, except for the noted PBS source, was found in the videos posted below)