In the winter
of 1918, the coldest the American Midwest had ever
endured, history's most lethal influenza virus was born.
Over the next year it flourished, killing as many as 100
million people. It killed more people in 24 weeks than
AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more people in a
year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a
century. There were many echoes of the Middle Ages in
1918; victims turned blue-black and priests in some of the
world's most modern cities drove horse-drawn carts down
the streets, calling upon people to bring out their dead.
But 1918 was
not the Middle Ages, and the story of this epidemic is not
simply one of death, suffering, and terror; it is a story
of one war imposed upon the background of another. For
the first time in history, science collided with epidemic
disease and great scientists - pioneers who defined modern
American medicine - pitted themselves against a
pestilence. The politicians and military commanders of
WWI, focusing upon a different type of enemy, ignored
warnings from the scientists and so fostered conditions
that helped the virus kill. The strain of the two wars
put society itself under almost unimaginable pressure.
Even as scientists began to make progress, the larger
society around them began to crack.
Yet ultimately
this is a story of triumph amidst tragedy, illuminating
human courage as well as science. In particular, this
courage led a tenacious investigator directly to one of
the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth
century.
The Great
Influenza is a brilliant depiction of individuals put to
the extreme test. Their response to this crisis provides
a precise and sobering model for our world as we confront
AIDS and other diseases.
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