Influenza Pandemic

Book Review

The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It

By Gina Kolata

Introduction

For most of the people of the world , the year 1918 was one of great challenge and hardship for much of Europe , the implements of war and the men and boys who wielded them cut a swatch of destruction and death across an entire continent . Among these weapons was one of a relatively new nature- the chemical weapon . With chemical weapons came the horrific ability to kill thousands , if

not millions , of people in one fell swoop . In the midst of such readily available death , millions of people across the United States and other parts of the world began to succumb to illnesses that were originally attributed , variably , to the work of German spies who infiltrated the food and water supplies of the nation , industrial sabotage , and classic works of terrorism . The reality would eventually be discovered as something much worse- an influenza epidemic that was an equal opportunity killer of men , women and children , by some estimates , as many as 18 to 20 million individuals , and just as quickly as it came to the world , it also faded away (Kolata . In its wake , many questions were left behind as to the nature of the epidemic , what its long term implications would be , and whether or not it would come back again , perhaps with a worse vengeance than before

In this research , a pivotal work on this subject , The...