Spanish Influenza essays

Spanish Influenza essays Influenza is and acute infectious and Contagious disease sometimes becoming Pandemic. It is characterized by an inflammation of the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract. Epidemics of this disease have been recorded as early as 1510. The Influenza pandemic of 1918 killed 600,000 people in the United States and more than 25 million people worldwide. It was called the Spanish flu because of a large outbreak of the disease that occurred in Spain in 1918. The origin of this influenza variation is not exactly known it is thought to have begun in china in a rare genetic variation of the influenza virus. The virus however may have originated among US soldiers in Kansas; about 500 men there were infected among 48 were listed as having pneumonia. Those who survived the epidemic carried the disease to Europe where in the summer of 1918 over one and one half million U.S. soldiers were sent to fight in the First World War. Whatever its origin by September 1918 the virus had spread to the civilian population of America It first reached epidemic proportions in Boston and then spread to New York, Philadelphia and beyond. In July 1918 Philadelphias Bureau of public health has issued a statement about Spanish Influenza. But health officials had not listed influenza as a reportable disease this denial of the danger of what was happening lead to people taking foolish risk. On September 28, 1918 a 4th Liberty Loan Drive parade was attended by 200,000 people and since Influenza is spread by breathing within days of the parade 635 new cases of the virus were reported and on October 6 289 people died. Most of the cities doctors and nurses were in Europe to support US involvement on the war there. Many people in Philadelphia died because they did not get proper medical treatment. The City sent out open trucks called death wagons to pick up corpse from wooden boxes on front porche ...