ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|20 pages
Virological and pathological perspectives
part II|23 pages
Contemporary Medical and Nursing Perspectives
chapter 3|9 pages
The Plague that was not Allowed to Happen
chapter 4|12 pages
‘You can't do anything for Influenza'
part III|28 pages
Official Responses to the Pandemic
chapter 5|13 pages
Japan and New Zealand in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
part IV|119 pages
The Demographic Impact
chapter 8|22 pages
Flu downunder
chapter 12|11 pages
A holocaust in a holocaust
chapter 13|16 pages
Long-term effects of the 1918 ‘Spanish' influenza epidemic on sex differentials of mortality in the USA
part V|20 pages
Long-term consequences and memories
chapter 14|9 pages
‘A fierce hunger'
part VI|13 pages
Epidemiological lessons of the pandemic