Mother - 1928

Vastly larger and deadlier than the current Ebola outbreak, the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19 killed 50 million people worldwide and more than half a million in the United States. It is considered one of the worst epidemics in human history.

But its appearance almost a century ago bore similarities to today, and engendered the same kind of fear, courage and tragedy that comes with the spread of a terrifying illness.
--Michael E. Ruane, The Washington Post

I have quoted excerpts from this article in The Washington Post which appeared in the paper this morning. I find the the hysteria and ignorance in this country, so little affected by a terrible disease ravaging parts of Africa, appalling, and the search for someone to blame and the politicizing of the efforts to contain it, unconscionable .

As in today's Ebola outbreak, doctors and nurses treating those sick with the Spanish flu were severely hit. My mother's older sister, Alberta, a nurse, died of it in 1918. Only one picture of Alberta exists, a rather poorly executed oil, and my search for a picture of it was fruitless, but I ran across this picture of my mother tucked between some books on my desk this morning. It struck me that she was eighteen when the picture was taken, the same age as her sister was when she died.

In 1918, the war was ending, soldiers were returning home from the war and crowded into bases and military installations.. Federal workers were living three and four to a room in private homes and boarding houses. The state of medicine was more primitive. Influenza was incorrectly thought to be caused by a bacteria. The flu virus was not isolated until the 1930's, and a vaccine wasn't available until the 1940's.

In many ways, the state of medicine in the affected African nations today resembles those my mother's sister faced in this country in 1918. Instead of becoming hysterical about how we are dealing with it here today, it would make a lot more sense for us to use our vastly improved medical resources to help people who don't have the same resources to help themselves, instead of getting hysterical and calling for us to close our borders. The doctors and nurses on the front lines of this battle, like Alberta in 1918, are the true heroes….