Influenza Strikes

Throughout history, influenza viruses have mutated and caused pandemics or global epidemics. In 1890, an especially virulent influenza pandemic struck, killing many Americans. Those who survived that pandemic and lived to experience the 1918 pandemic tended to be less susceptible to the disease.

From Kansas to Europe and back again, wave after wave, the unfolding of the pandemic, mobilizing to fight influenza, the pandemic hits, protecting yourself, communication, fading of the pandemic. More>>

Voices of the Pandemic

March 1918 - January 1919. Communications through Public Health Reports, physicians, newspapers, letters, and telegrams. More>>

Fighting Influenza

During the mid to late nineteenth-century, physicians and scientists had begun to understand that diseases are caused by microorganisms. This was a radical departure from traditional medical theories which had held that diseases were caused by miasmas or an imbalance in the body’s humors.

How phyisicans understood influenza at the time, what happened to influenza patients in the early 1900s, preventing and treating influenza. More>>

The Legacy of the Pandemic

No one knows exactly how many people died during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. During the 1920s, researchers estimated that 21.5 million people died as a result of the 1918-1919 pandemic. More recent estimates have estimated global mortality from the 1918-1919 pandemic at anywhere between 30 and 50 million. An estimated 675,000 Americans were among the dead.

Research, forgetting the pandemic of 1918-1919, scientific milestones, 20th century influenza or global pandemics. More>>