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Author: Carol Byerly
ISBN : B004DNWBXO
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Format: PDF
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The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people in one year than the Great War killed in four, sickening at least one quarter of the world's population. In Fever of War, Carol R. Byerly uncovers the startling impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the American army, its medical officers, and their profession, a story which has long been silenced. Through medical officers' memoirs and diaries, official reports, scientific articles, and other original sources, Byerly tells a grave tale about the limits of modern medicine and warfare. The tragedy begins with overly confident medical officers who, armed with new knowledge and technologies of modern medicine, had an inflated sense of their ability to control disease. The conditions of trench warfare on the Western Front soon outflanked medical knowledge by creating an environment where the influenza virus could mutate to a lethal strain. This new flu virus soon left medical officers 8217; confidence in tatters as thousands of soldiers and trainees died under their care. They also were unable to convince the War Department to reduce the crowding of troops aboard ships and in barracks which were providing ideal environments for the epidemic to thrive. After the war, and given their helplessness to control influenza, many medical officers and military leaders began to downplay the epidemic as a significant event for the U. S. army, in effect erasing this dramatic story from the American historical memory.
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- File Size: 1265 KB
- Print Length: 270 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0814799248
- Publisher: NYU Press reference; 1 edition (April 5, 2005)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B004DNWBXO
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #545,873 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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I never cared a whit about military history until I read this book. The way that the history of medicine and the history of war are so intertwined added great depth to the story. I started it just wanting to learn more about the Spanish Flu, but finished it wanting to read more about the history of medicine and the military.
By Emily Beeler
In the five recognized wars that the United States fought in the twentieth century (WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf) the country suffered some 440,000 killed in action. In 1918, 675,000 Americans died of the flu. In all, the flu killed some 50,000,000 peopleapproximately the same number killed in World War II (no one knows exactly how many in either the flu or WW II).
In 1918 the medical profession was confident that they understood how disease was spread. In 1878 Louis Pasteur had published his breakthrough book "Germ Theory and Its Applications to Medicine and Surgery." (Note that the publication date is well after the American Civil War where the doctors knew nothing about germs. This book is available free from [...]) While this was not immediately accepted by the medical profession, by 1918 it was understood, accepted and tought in medical school.
Unfortunately flu is not caused by germs but a virus, and in 1918 they knew nothing of viruses. And it wasn't until World War II that penicillin, the first effective anti-bacterial was discovered. While this wouldn't have stopped a virus, it is likely that it would have stopped the pneumonia that followed the virus and was the actual killer of most people.
Can it happen again? Yes! AIDS infects about 36 million people and is now killing them at about a million people a year. And both of these numbers are increasing.
This is a powerful book that covers an area of history that it seems was almost deliberately covered up by the Government, the media, and the historians. Highly recommended.
By John Matlock
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