What I learned from this article, among other things, is that the “Spanish flu,” which caused 50 million deaths around the world in 1918, did not start in Spain. The author argues that it actually started in Kansas and was brought to Europe by American troops who had come to make the world “safe for democracy.” And one other thing: the author, John M. Barry of Tulane, believes that Woodrow Wilson did not die of a stroke while at the Paris Peace Conference, but of the influenza.
This was no ordinary flu. It was deadly and devastating. The first wave was bad. The second wave was even worse.
For a fascinating look at the 1918 pandemic, read this article. It was written in 1917.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks for this excellent article, Diane.
My grandfather’s brother was in the military taking care of soldiers in Europe. He caught the flu and died there in 1918.
“Different genes (in animals and humans in close proximity) can be shuffled and exchanged like playing cards.” As Bob has said, it should make us reconsider the potential harmful impact of factory farming.
I happen to be reading Barry’s book right now. Good read, first published in 2004. It is interesting that Barry does not treat the possibility the disease originated in China as suggested by Canadian historian Mark Humphries in 2014, who unearthed medical records of sick Chinese workers traveling across Canada in 1917 on trains bound for wartime industries and trench building in Europe.
Although I bow to the superior knowledge of the author, I find the Haskel County, Kansas beginning of the flu epidemic hard to believe. The link between Haskel County and Camp Fuston, a military installation in Kansas is pretty well supported.
If the 1918 flu started in the New World, it would stand alone in the only major disease to have originated in the new world. Haskel County is out there, sparsely populated today as it was then. Seems an unlikely place to start an epidemic.
I agree, every one should read this article. For those of you looking for something to read, The Great Influenza is a great read, as is his book Rising Tide, about the Mississippi Flood of 1927, which I consider to be among the best American histories I’ve ever read. Another important subtext of The Great Influenza is a sweeping history of the birth of medical research in the U.S. and how our nation became the world’s leading research community through the pressure of finding a cure for the Great Influenza. Some ideas germinated by this catastrophe led to the birth of molecular biology and the discovery of DNA. In addition, the combination of public pressure and political will led to the creation of the field of public health and the federal agency that would eventually become the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
In laying out the background for his history, Barry points out certain milestones such as the birth of Johns Hopkins University in 1876, the first medical research institution in the United States with a rigorous devotion to the scientific method. Medical research produced its first cure for a disease—any disease—for diphtheria in 1891 in Germany. That discovery has led to the never-ending quest of medical researchers to search for “magic bullets” for all diseases. By the beginning of World War I, only one “magic bullet” had been developed. “Paul Ehrlich…and a colleague had tried nine hundred different chemical compounds to cure syphilis before retesting the 606th one. It was an arsenic compound; this time they made it work, curing syphilis without poisoning the patient. Named salversan, it was often called just ‘606.’” Arsenic trioxide is now used as a treatment for certain cancers. And to think, the first “magic bullet,” the thing we all desire for every disease, was discovered a little more than 100 years ago.
Another part of the article and book, the description of cytokine release syndrome (CRS), confounds researchers to this day. The most exciting medical research taking place today is CAR T-cell and T-cell immunotherapy, in which an individual’s white blood cells are manipulated, or “taught,” to identify targets on cancer cells that kill them. The problem is in stopping its action after it destroys cancer cells. The manipulated cells keep looking for targets and start to attack healthy cells, which is called CRS. The problem to overcome is create a “brake” to make the cells stop. In our healthy immune systems, the cells undergo cell death, called apoptosis, once they have done their job. Manipulated cells don’t have the mechanisms to create apoptosis. For those of you who have had or know someone who has had a stem cell transplant in the treatment of many blood cancers, this is what happens graft-versus-host-disease develops. It is a gruesome side effect.
The history of virtually all modern scientific activity can be traced back to response to cure the Great Influenza. If there is a silver lining in the current pandemic, it is that it may create new inspirations to guide future medical research, especially the bureaucratic infrastructures that are so vitally needed to support research communities around the world.
Another trivially coincidental part of Paul Ehrlich’s last name (pronounced air-lish, not err-lick) is that it translates into honest or trustworthy. One of the more appropriately named persons on history.
“That discovery has led to the never-ending quest of medical researchers to search for “magic bullets” for all diseases.”
I differ with you. According to the shaman that I’m working with, cures for diseases have been suppressed by the Western Medical Establishment. There is no money to be made if people get cured.
A cure for cancer was made by Dr. Royal Rife in the 1930’s. He used some type of vibrational energy. 16 patients with stage 4 cancer were cured. It was either 3-4 of the patients who needed therapy for 2-3 months longer to be cured. Other doctors were using his methods and were getting the same results. They were told by the AMA that if they didn’t stop doing that they would lose their medical licenses. They stopped.
The AMA, if you Google his name, is claiming he was a quack. The study that he did was verified by other researchers.
I shrank a neurofibromatosis type 2 brain tumor by 2mm and my hearing had been improving. [NF2 is a rare nerve disease in which the first symptom is usually growth of a tumor inside both hearing nerves. There is a shortage of myelin on nerves, which causes tumors to grow on nerves at anytime anywhere in the body.] These are very tough tumors and they NEVER shrink. The shrinkage was verified by an MRI given by the National Institutes of Health when I was a patient there. Instead of wanting to know HOW I shrank that tumor, I was thrown out of the study for being severely mentally ill. I was SO mentally ill, that a psychiatrist at the National Institutes of Health wrote that without psychiatric help, they were afraid that I’d become a threat to myself or others. I was way too ill to continue being in this study.
The head researcher in the natural history study in which I had been a patient did a clinical study on Avastin, a drug that he told me had serious side effects. I achieved the same results with NO side effects.
I had a licensed psychologist write up an evaluation rebutting what NIH had written. Dr. Larry Stoler concluded that I wasn’t showing any psychotic illness but that I had been healing and that wasn’t recognized by the Western Medical establishment.
After I’d been in this study for 2-3 years, I was told that there were 160 patients in the study. I was the ONLY one that was functioning normally. I am still functioning normally. I was in the Neurofibromatosis Type 2 Natural History Study for 4 and a half years and got kicked out in November 2012.
I’ll ask again. Why was I thrown out of a study at NIH for being severely mentally ill when all that I did was shrink a tumor, as proven by an MRI at NIH, and have the head researcher say that he knew that my hearing was improving?
Carol, you know I love and respect you. So please take this response in the vein it is intended, and it is not an attack or demeaning of your views. But I will try to explain why I think you have been misinformed. And I apologize in advance if this response gets too long. But I want to try to dispel you of what I consider to be bad advice and guidance you have received. You may still disagree with me, but I have no agenda. To be clear, much of the funding that pays me does come from pharmaceutical companies, but in almost 22 years of working in this field, I have never once been told how I should put together patient education programs and often have focused on education they pay for that actually benefits their “competitors.” The reason for this is that everyone understands, rather than profiting off of patients who do not benefit from their treatments, the goal now is to identify those patients who do or might.
First, there is no such thing as “a cure for cancer.” I have argued for years with my friends at the American Cancer Society to no avail that they should change their name to the American Cancers Society. There is no monolithic thing called cancer. In the type of cancer I know best (and all cancers, for that matter), what I and the organization for which I work, the main thing we try to convey is the truth, which has only been determined in the past 15 years, to patients is that every cancer is unique. You may be diagnosed with this or that “cancer,” but with an increasing understanding of genetics, we have learned that even within the categories we use–breast, prostate, colon, etc–are mostly meaningless. It is the genetic signature that is most important. If you have a particular genetic signature, your subtype of cancer may have more in common with other body parts or systems than the way we laypersons identify them. It’s one of the reasons I feel the “pink” marketing of breast cancer is cynical. Not all breast cancers are alike and some may have nothing to do with other types of breast cancer. So if anyone talks about a “cure for cancer,” they should be suspect.
The example you pick of Dr. Rife and “stage 4” is also troubling and misleading. Staging means different thing for different types of cancer and, as I wrote above, even within categories. “Stage 4” is only a dire prognosis for some types of cancer. For some cancers, “stage 4” describes certain genetic signatures and has absolutely no correlation to prognosis. Anyone who uses “stages” as a blanket categorization is one to ignore.
Your example of Avastin is also telling and confirms my explanation of genetic differentiation. As I tell the patients I work with, what works for you will kill another patient with the same type of “cancer.” That’s because of the genetic signature. This was something that was unknown among the best researchers in the past 15-20 years. What worked for you with Avastin will kill the patient next to you who has a differing genetic signature. This is why the “debate” about hydroxochloriquine is so dangerous. We know it will help some, we know it will have adverse effects on some and might kill them. Without knowing their genetic characteristics and why it cures or kills them is a lottery. Some will do well, others won’t and they will likely die of something cardiac issues.
With respect to “western medicine,” your views explain why medical research is not contained by borders. When people like Sen. Cotton (R-AR) say they want to exclude Chinese researchers from funding, they are idiots. Diseases and research to are not affected by political borders. But you know what? Those researcher also base their conclusions and/or recommendations on prospective randomized studies. You cite a study in which you were the only one who responded out of 160 patients. Should we do a blanket recommendation based on your success? What about the 159 who did not respond?
The type of cancer I work with was first categorized in the 1870s and it was determined in a retrospective study that the first identified patient had it in the 1840s, but no one knew what she had. Examination of Egyptian mummies has shown that this cancer existed as far back as the 20th century BC. The first drug that directly treated it was an old drug, thalidomide, which was responsible for horrific birth defect in the early 1960s, but was found to be effective in this type of cancer in 1998. Since then, more drugs have been approved for this type of cancer than any other, leading to more progress than any other cancer. In 1998, it was a sure death sentence for 95% of patients. Now 75% will live good, long lives.
Finally, the idea that drug companies are profiting off of death and don’t want to find a cure is a sinister myth that has to end now. Yes, drug companies make money, and that is another public policy discussion for another day–I don’t agree with the thesis AT ALL. The idea that doctors are part of the supposed charade is even more sinister. I know of no doctors who are trying to profit off of their patients. Do you think your doctors are? I’ll answer for you–NO! They are doing their best to keep all patients alive. And you know what? If all their patients are cured, they will be the first in line to work in other cancers and diseases to cure them (genetic differentiation!). There is enough work for everybody. Every doctor I know wants to be put out of business to work on other problems. Every one.
This is why I advise patients to take the advice of “shamans,” “psychotherapists,” and the like with a pound of salt or more. They are not medical doctors or researchers. The only way we currently have to verify scientific studies is through prospective, randomized studies. These take time. That is why, during this pandemic, responsible researchers don’t overpromise. They act on the best knowledge they have right now and understand that the state-of-the-art today may be obsolete in two weeks. They won’t try to sell old knowledge, they will adjust and do their best to develop new knowledge that can be replicated by their colleagues around the world.
End of sermon.
I said to look up the accomplishments of Dr. Royal Rife.
Fortunately the alternative medicine section of NIH is studying Qigong treatments on various diseases. They get very bad funding because they are not recognized as ‘real’ doctors.
You have no idea of what shamans are capable of doing nor what they know.
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In 1934, the University of Southern California appointed a Special Medical Research Committee to bring 16 terminal cancer patients from Pasadena County Hospital to Rife’s San Diego Laboratory and clinic for treatment.The team included doctors and pathologists assigned to examine the patients, if still alive, in 90 days. Rife successfully cured within three months time 14 out of 16 terminally ill cancer patients, while the other two were cured after subsequent six weeks. Despite his 100% cure rate, he was deprived of any acknowledgment for his accomplishment.
Participating in the original 1934 USC study were the following people: Director of the Northwestern Medical School Arthur Kendall, president of USC Rufus Klein-Schmidt, Milbank Johnson, Edward Kopps of the Metabolic Clinic in La Jolla, George Fischer of the NY Childrens Hospital, Kurt Meyer of the Hooper Foundation in San Francisco, and the Chief Surgeon of Santa Fe Railway Whalen Morrison.
Dr Milbank Johnson, who was the professor of Physiology and Clinical Medicine at USC, and chairman of the Special Medical Research Committee, operated his own cancer clinic utilizing the Rife therapy for 10 years. He was able to document many cases of cancer reversal there.
OK, I have no idea.
GregB: “You cite a study in which you were the only one who responded out of 160 patients. Should we do a blanket recommendation based on your success? What about the 159 who did not respond?”
I never responded to any treatments given at NIH.They never gave me any treatments.
I did one treatment, on my own, that I found in a book entitled, “Intention Heals”, by Adam McLeod. He wrote this book and I saw one article about how to shrink cancer tumors.
I envisioned the tumor and ‘injected’ metallic nanoparticles directly into the tumor. Then I projected imaginary radio waves into this tumor. I, in my mind’s eye, saw the tumor cells absorbing the heat.
I always felt sweat all over my face. 9 times the sweat was so bad that it trickled off of my chin.
THIS was how I shrank a neurofibromatosis type 2 brain tumor that showed up on an MRI at NIH. THIS was one of two reasons I got kicked out of NIH for being severely mentally ill.
Not a big fan of Wikipedia outside of movie information, but took you up on it. If anyone’s reading this, decide for yourselves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rife
GregB: The AMA worked to discredit Dr. Royal Rife.
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The American Medical Association (AMA) Strikes Again
In 1913, Morris Fishbein was recruited by George Simmons to work at the office of American Medical Association (AMA). George Simmons, the prior head of the AMA, made Fishbein his protégé and helped him reach the top. Fishbein became head of the AMA in 1934 and ruled with an iron fist. Ironically, despite being the head of the AMA, Fishbein had never practised medicine a day in his life. Despite that, he spent his career denouncing chiropractors and alternative healers at every turn…
The same year as the 1934 study, Morris Fishbein had acquired the entire stock of the American Medical Association and became its head.
Around 1938, Fishbein sent attorneys to Rife with an offer to buy the exclusive rights to the technology. Rife refused.
Things went downhill from here.
Documents, research, photographs and films all began to go missing from Rife’s San Diego lab.
The big blow came when someone had vandalized Rife’s virus microscopes.
In 1939, a laboratory in New Jersey that was repeating Rife’s work had burned down while the scientist running the program was visiting Rife in San Diego. The fire came just as the scientists were preparing to announce confirmation of Rife’s work…
https://cureforlymedisease.com/dr-royal-rife/
This is part of the article that I sent. I’m posting it incase people don’t take the time to read the full article about The American Medical Association (AMA) Strikes Again.
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What About All Of The Doctors Who Supported Him?
One by one they were paid off or killed.
Arthur Kendall, who had worked with Rife on the cancer virus and in discovering pleomorphism, accepted almost a quarter of a million dollars to drop everything and retire in Mexico! An unheard of amount of money in the Great Depression.
Dr. George Dock was also silenced with a huge grant and also received the highest honours the AMA could bestow.
Dr. Hamer who had sent up his own practice and was treating upwards of 40 patients a day with Rife’s technology had to give up his machine or else he would be removed from the medical society because the machine wasn’t authorized by the AMA.
Dr. Couche and Dr. Milbank were the only ones that didn’t give up Rife’s work/return to selling pharmaceuticals. Milbank said he would gladly give it all to cure cancer.
In 1944, just as he was about to make a public announcement about Rife’s device, Milbank died a rapid death of food poisoning. In late 1950’s and early 60’s, two federal inspectors examined Milbank’s hospital records and concluded that he was likely poisoned.
We have much to learn from the pandemic. Among them is the reality that children will return to school at a wide variety of levels. No longer may we assume children are an extension of one child who learns in one way. First we must determine their level as a jumping off spot. Not as a political ploy, but as a tool providing information to teachers to better prepare for that childs pathway to learning.
Guaranteed the big test will not accomplish this for several reasons. One is that the old test is out of date. Secondly, a new test will take too long to get back to teachers. Remember, the big test was not designed for children or teachers. It was designed for politicians.
With this knowledege, a wide variety of assessments could be used. Small pre tests could be given with the results going immediately to teachers. Of course, anecdotal teacher notes will be essential to connect assessment to reality. Demonstrations of learning gives much more information than paper and pencil tasks. As an example, repeating the scientific method accomplishes little compared to a science project that demonstrates the scientific method.
In order to teach in the way children learn best, SMALL CLASS SIZE IS ESSENTIAL for safety and for learning. Teacher must refuse to return to the classroom without small class size.
This pandemic will also separate the true educators from the fake. So many think that going to a charter will solve all problems when it’s just shuffling the deck shares on the Titanic. NPR had the best radio presentation I have ever heard on the series “Hidden Brain”. It tells how the confirmation bias works and that is exactly what happens when people automatic believe that a name of a school changes the school. Charters are no better just because they are charters.
This leads to another necessary change for schools. To teach kids to think beyond the confirmation.bias.
When public schools respond to the needs of children during this crisis, they will arise above a;ll the rest!
If they had called it the Kansas flu, no one would have known where it originated.
Even most people in the UD would have said “Kansas? Where’s that? Oz?”
Besides, Spanish flu just sounds better than Kansas flu
“Even most people in the US”
Self correct surely doesn’t know where Kansas is. Doesn’t even know what the US is. Changed it to UD, whatever that means.
The name of the Flu came from the fact that the Spanish were neutral in the war. All the other countries experiencing the outbreak were afraid that reporting it would give their opponents a psychological advantage. The fact that the pandemic arose during a war almost assured that it would be catastrophic.
I think the connection with that rural Kansas County was discovered in the post-mortem. I could be incorrect.
That is one powerful article.
There are some key warning signs in it for us lay folks – “15 months” and “two years” while “tracing” may not have been the term then, the article illustrates the necessity and we are learning the value of it daily (including how forcing Americans to return with no testing and with no plan back in February made this dramatically worse in hot-spots and travel hubs.
In three months, school opens in half the country. In some places, the conspiracy crowd and disbelievers will demand schools open just like the tattoo parlors and bars. In others, they have the means ($) and the means (social – parents at home…). And, still in others kids are in homes where the adults have lost jobs, are working two and three jobs, and adults cannot be at home.
Which leads to the most powerful message in the article: You don’t manage the truth – you TELL THE TRUTH.
Well, for the president, this is just reality tv. And, in his circle – you ignore the truth and worse, discredit it. In his senate circle – they don’t know truth because whatever he says – they don’t even read it because they are too scared not to agree (and by the way WHY ARE THOSE SENATORS NOT PUT ON THE SPOT DAILY BY REPORTERS TO COMMENT WHY THEY ARE LETTING US BE LIED TO…?)
So, as Radar O’Reilly would say when the wounded were flying in “Wait for it!”
Today it was “Open the Churches” even though he had no authority to say it. Soon it will be “Open the Schools” – even though he has no authority to say it.
Wait for it.
The University of Michigan has a Center for the History of Madison, with a dedicated Influenza Encyclopedia. I just did a search for Boston, Massachusetts–the metro area closest to the home of my grandparents and mother, who was a student nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) when the pandemic hit.
This library has photocopies of many newspaper reports on the influenza. The archive is worth visiting because the news of the day, over several days and years, reveals a rolling set of similarities to the COVID-19 responses now. In addition to reports on the number of people with the flu, rates of hospitalization, and deaths, some newspapers reported on deliberations about opening or closing public spaces. Some newspapers discussed advantages and disadvantages of reopening schools, and when that should happen.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/f/flu?sort=datea&rgn=subject&size=25&start=1&subview=short&type=simple&view=reslist&q1=Boston%2C+Massachusetts
Thanks, it was very informative!
Obviously the COVID-19 threat doesn’t exist in Trump supporters’ minds. He wants the country to open and they responded.
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Daytona Beach crowds: 5/23/20
May 23, 2020
Events in Daytona Beach on Saturday, May 23 (Memorial Day weekend)
This is a time when Trump should be consoling Americans. He is incapable of doing that.
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President Trump played golf on May 24, during Memorial Day weekend at his club in the Washington D.C. suburbs.
The long Memorial Day weekend gave the pandemic an indelible visual image: President Trump, wearing a ball cap but no mask, enjoying himself on his Northern Virginia golf course. Last week, you will recall, Trump declared it was “essential” that Americans be able to spend Sunday at church services. He chose to head for the links instead.
Video:
https://wapo.st/2ztphyq