1918 Influenza on Delmarva: Books

In 1918-1919 influenza raged around the globe in the worst pandemic in recorded history. Focusing on those closest to the crisis--patients, families, communities, public health officials, nurses and doctors--this book explores the epidemic in the United States.

Dubbed `Flu Hunter' by Smithsonian Magazine in 2006, Dr Webster began his research in the early 1960s with the insight that the natural ecology of most influenza viruses is among wild aquatic birds. Painstaking tracking and testing of thousands of birds eventually led him and the other scientists involved to establish a link between these bird virus `reservoirs' and human influenza pandemics. Some of this fascinating scientific work involved exhuming bodies of Spanish flu victims from the Arctic permafrost in a search for tissue samples containing genetic material from the virus. Could a global influenza pandemic occur again? Webster's warning is clear: ` ... it is not only possible, it is just a matter of when.'

Viral Modernism examines how literature and culture represented the virus's deathly fecundity, as writers wrestled with the scope of mass death in the domestic sphere amid fears of wider social collapse. Outka analyzes overt treatments of the pandemic by authors like Katherine Anne Porter and Thomas Wolfe and its subtle presence in works by Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats. She uncovers links to the disease in popular culture, from early zombie resurrection to the resurgence of spiritualism. Viral Modernism brings the pandemic to the center of the era, revealing a vast tragedy that has hidden in plain sight.

"In the winter of 1918, the coldest the American Midwest had ever endured, history's most lethal influenza virus was born. Over the next year it flourished, killing as many as 100 million people. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century. There were many echoes of the Middle Ages in 1918: victims turned blue-black and priests in some of the world's most modern cities drove horse-drawn carts down the streets, calling upon people to bring out their dead.

Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives, more people than those perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event.

Nursing has a rich history that consistently informs contemporary practice and standards. This book, by examining pivotal historical interventions across the spectrum of clinical care, allows nurses of today to incorporate the wisdom of the past into their own daily work. Maternal-child health programs, palliative care, tuberculosis, medications, pediatric care, and diabetes care, and more are discussed.

This timely volume describes and analyzes the nursing response to a variety of historic and recent global disasters that occurred between 1885 and 2012, including Hurricane Sandy. The book is unique in its discussion of cooperation and conflict in the disaster responses regarding the mobilization of individuals across national borders and continents. It examines how partnerships developed, their implications for policy, and how we can use lessons learned to improve care in the future.

The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people in one year than the Great War killed in four, sickening at least one quarter of the world's population. In Fever of War, Carol R. Byerly uncovers medical officers' memoirs and diaries, official reports, scientific articles, and other original sources, to tell a grave tale about the limits of modern medicine and warfare.

These papers, collected in The War at Home, provide a thoughtful look into the many ways the Great War affected Arkansas and how that history plays out today.