The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 : New Perspectives
The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 was the worst pandemic of modern times, claiming over 30 million lives in less than six months. In the hardest hit societies, everything else was put aside in a bid to cope with its ravages. It left millions orphaned and medical science desperate to find its cause. Despite the magnitude of its impact, few scholarly attempts have been made to examine this calamity in its many-sided complexity. On a global, multidisciplinary scale, the book seeks to apply the insights of a wide range of social and medical sciences to an investigation of the pandemic. Topics covered include the historiography of the pandemic, its virology, the enormous demographic impact, the medical and governmental responses it elicited, and its long-term effects, particularly the recent attempts to identify the precise causative virus from specimens taken from flu victims in 1918, or victims buried in the Arctic permafrost at that time
History
1 online resource (369 pages).
9780203468371, 0203468376
1048248423
Cover
The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
List of tables
Notes on contributors
A virologist's foreword
A historian's foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I Virological and pathological perspectives
1 A virologist's perspective on the 1918-19 pandemic
2 Genetic characterisation of the 1918 'Spanish' influenza virus
PART II Contemporary medical and nursing perspectives
3 The plague that was not allowed to happen: German medicine and the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 in Baden
4 'You can't do anything for influenza': doctors, nurses and the power of gender during the influenza pandemic in the United States
PART III Official responses to the pandemic
5 Japan and New Zealand in the 1918 influenza pandemic: comparative perspectives on official responses and crisis management
6 Coping with the influenza pandemic: the Bombay experience
PART IV The demographic impact
7 Spanish influenza in China, 1918-20: a preliminary probe
8 Flu downunder: a demographic and geographic analysis of the 1919 epidemic in Sydney, Australia
9 The overshadowed killer: influenza in Britain in 1918-19
10 Death in winter: Spanish flu in the Canadian subarctic
11 Spanish influenza seen from Spain
12 A holocaust in a holocaust: the Great War and the 1918 'Spanish' influenza epidemic in France
13 Long-term effects of the 1918 'Spanish' influenza epidemic on sex differentials of mortality in the USA: exploratory findings from historical data
Part V Long-term consequences and memories
14 'A fierce hunger': tracing impacts of the 1918-19 influenza epidemic in southwest Tanzania
15 'The dog that did not bark': memory and the 1918 influenza epidemic in Senegal
Part VI Epidemiological lessons of the pandemic. 16 Transmission of, and protection against, influenza: epidemiologic observations beginning with the 1918 pandemic and their implications
Notes
Bibliography
Index