Cartoon by Ernest Noble from 1918 representing the influenza virus
From the Recipes Project by Ida Milne:
This season’s higher than normal influenza cases has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, the worst in modern history. It killed more than 40 million people, according to the World Health Organisation. It punctured medical doctors’ newfound confidence in the power of bacteriology to fight infectious disease. In Ireland, it killed at least 23,000 people (the number of certified deaths from influenza and excess pneumonia) and infected about 800,000 people, one fifth of the population. Entire communities fell silent as it passed through.
Laboratories churned out vaccines, but the general consensus was these vaccines, made from bacteria suspected to cause influenza like illness such as Pfeiffer’s bacillus (haemophilus influenza), were ineffective. Physicians threw everything in their medical bag at it, trying desperately, and in vain, to find a cure for a disease they found baffling. Ultimately, doctors came to realise that the most effective treatment was good nursing – which included nutritious food – and strong liquor.
There was little consensus amongst the medical profession on what medicine worked best. Some suggested quinine and grains of aspirin to reduce fever and grains of opium for sleeplessness. Calomel (mercurous chloride) was liberally prescribed, as doctors then were very keen on keeping the bowels open. Strychnine, which we tend to view now as the villain’s poison of choice in James Bond movies, was injected as a stimulant.
Read more at The Recipes Project
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