A pandemic occurs when a disease spreads in significant numbers world-wide. If a disease is more limited in area, not found in large numbers in multiple continents, it is an epidemic. An outbreak simply means there are more cases of a disease in a specific local area than is normal.
The “Spanish Flu” was pandemic but not really Spanish at all. The world was at war and news media was not writing about nor reporting on news that might lower moral. It was illegal to print such news in the United States.
Spain, neutral during the war, had a press which wrote about and discussed the flu. This was especially true when the King Alfonzo VIII of Spain came down with the disease. In Spain it was the “French Flu,” but as the Spanish press was the only media printing about it, it became known as the “Spanish Flu.”
Where did it start? Perhaps right here in Kansas. There are several theories of the origin. Britain, China and France have all been theorized as where the flu started. However, the first documented case was at Camp Funston at Fort Riley on March 11, 1918. By the end of March, 1,100 men at the camp had been hospitalized and 38 had died.
But there were earlier cases noted and documented by Dr. Loring Miner. Miner was a physician whose practice sprawled for hundreds of square miles in southwestern Kansas. Specifically, in sparsely populated Haskell County. His patients were dying of what he diagnosed as influenza in late January and early February of 1918.
Not the older patients one might ordinarily associate with “the flu” but the young and seemingly healthiest were dying. The disease could be vicious, progress quickly and be lethal. Miner reported his findings to public health officials. His report was not published until April 5, 1918, after the 1,100 men had been taken ill at Camp Funston.
The first wave of the flu, the wave in the spring of 1918, was often similar in symptoms and mortality to a seasonal flu. The death rate was not nearly what medical professionals would find when the second wave hit.
With World War I in full swing, troops were moving from camp to camp, base to base and from the United States to Europe. They took the flu with them. A train of healthy men could depart for a base a few hundred miles away and arrive with many ill or near death.
The “Spanish Flu” had an incubation period of 24 to 72 hours. In hindsight, mandatory quarantines after troops moved to a new base or camp could have quelled the numbers of both infections and deaths.
Quarantines were not mandated for all until it was too late. Some quarantines were for only enlisted men and not officers. Not only was there flu, measles was also running rampant. Quarantines would have quelled that disease which was also bringing death to many in some camps.
No one was prepared for the second wave of the flu. Somewhere in Europe, the virus mutated. This mutation produced a lethal variety of the flu that could kill within twenty-four hours, sometimes twelve, of onset. This virus swept through countries, continents, cities and armies.
In the three months, September to November of 1918, most of the deaths attributed to the pandemic occurred. Hospitals and medical personnel were totally overwhelmed. Mortuaries were likewise taxed beyond their ability to respond.
There were not enough coffins. Gravediggers refused to dig graves for those who had died from the flu. In some places, steam shovels dug mass graves for shrouded bodies.
The disease struck the young and healthy. Those in the military and those at home. The pneumonia that could and did result from the flu’s damage to the lungs, had no cure. There were no antibiotics as we have today. Efforts were made. Floyd Metz wrote to his parents in Mankato that he had his “throat sprayed every night.”
During this second wave, the late Claude Slate was serving in the United States Army. Slate was a long-time Mitchell and Jewell County resident. In long ago visits with him, this author knew he served in California, his work was in a hospital caring for flu patients and he never got the flu.
In visiting with his grandson, Jim Slate of Glen Elder, it was learned that one of his grandfather’s tasks wasto make placebos. A placebo is not medicine, but something given to someone ill as if it were a medical treatment. If one is ill and believes they are receiving something beneficial, that “something” can actually help. Even if it has no medicinal value.
Slate made placebos, capsules of bread crumbs for the sick and dying men. In a time where there was nothing that could be done, something was tried. If and who it helped is not known.
In late September, the city of Philadelphia was to have a Liberty Bond Parade. It was to be the biggest parade in the history of Philadelphia. Public health workers urged that the parade be cancelled because of the number of flu cases already in the city. The public health director, Wilmer Krusen, insisted it was just a “seasonal flu” and the parade would go on as scheduled. There were War Bonds to sell and Philadelphia had a quota to meet.
On Sept. 28, 1918, the two-mile long parade marched before some 200,000 spectators. In three days, all 31 Philadelphia hospitals were full. It was said “people knew the instant they became ill.” In a week, 2,600 were dead. Some 12,000 Philadelphians were to die of the flu before the siege was over.
St. Louis was a different story. Dr. Max Starkloff, public health commissioner, was on the alert. Before the disease struck, he had already written an article about the importance of avoiding crowds. When the flu spread to the civilian population from a nearby military facility, Starkloff closed schools and pool halls plus banned gatherings of people.
Those efforts “flattened the curve” in St. Louis. The mortality rate in St. Louis was one-eighth of that in Philadelphia. One-eighth.
Jewell County newspapers had “items” about the flu. The Formoso New Era edition of Oct. 10, 1918 noted “considerable illness in Mankato” and Mr. Glatfelter, “a barber” had died. The Dec. 12, 1918 issue tells of “interested relatives” who did not attend the review of the 10th Division at Camp Funston because of “the flu epidemic.”
Back in Haskell County, the Sublette Monitor’s Oct. 24, 1918 edition related “Bob Josserand came in from Camp Funston for a short visit. He reported 500 being dead at one time at Camp Funston with the Spanish Flu.”
The Nov. 21, 1918 issue of the New Era reported 20 cases of flu in Republic, 100 cases in Belleville and 50 in Jamestown. Later the March 20, 1919 issue of the Esbon News was late because the editor and his family all had the flu.
After the terrible spike in flu cases and flu-pneumonia deaths during the fall and early winter, it was hoped it was over. It was not to be. With the end of WWI came the return of troops and the return of the flu. Not the same virulent type of the fall but nasty enough in its own right.
To deal with the flu, an article in the Jan. 10, 1919 Jewell County Republican advised readers to “drink water,” “spit in paper or an old cloth and burn them,” “wash hands,” “don’t touch mouth or nose.” Later that month, it was reported “D. F. Oplinger is caring for the Warren Oplinger family.”
This third wave of the flu was felt keenly in the family of Frosty Crouse of Jewell. Crouse grew up on a Finney County farm just one mile from Haskell County where the flu possibly developed. In that farm home, during the third wave of the flu, three died.
Crouse’s grandfather, Emmett Crouse, was 26 years old when he succumbed to the flu in February of 1919. He left a pregnant wife and toddler son. Earlier in the month an uncle, Howard Slagle, died and later, in April, another uncle, James Smith would also die.
A correspondent to the Randall News had lamented “We wonder if the dreadful flu will ever be a thing of the past.” Athens High School was closed for a week and a half in March of 1919. Other schools closed, some more than once. Churches in Ionia cancelled services.
Though supposedly the flu petered out in the summer of 1919, local newspapers were still noting cases of the flu in February of 1920. O.M. Chillcott and Elmo Bartholomew were sick. Harve Buster’s, Earl Silsby, the Norris Family and Elsie Cartwright were all noted as having the flu. February saw such comments as “Flu! Flu! Flu! Everybody has the flu.” and “the flu is mopping up those who missed it last year.”
The Mankato Monitor carried the information that girls who have had the flu could practice basketball and baseball but those who had never had it could not even watch. In Osborne County too many were sick and court was cancelled.
As late as April of 1920 the flu was still in the news. It was noted that George Nelson had died of the flu and his wife was critically ill. She brought the disease home with her from a visit to Nebraska.
More WWI service men would die of the flu than died in battle or of battle wounds. On Dec. 4, 1918, Elmer Dressler of Mankato wrote his parents from Lorouville, France he knew of “1,000,000 deaths of the flu.”
It was the same all over the world. All told, it is estimated that at least 50 million people world-wide died of the flu. About one-third of the world’s population or 500 million suffered from the disease before it finally was over.
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