Spanish flu: the killer that still stalks us, 100 years on

H

hinterland

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...tenary-first-world-war?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

In an era before antibiotics and vaccines, the “Spanish influenza” – so-called because neutral Spain was one of the few countries in 1918 where correspondents were free to report on the outbreak – claimed the lives of nearly 250,000 Britons. Cruelly for a nation that had seen the flower of British male youth mown down by German guns, the majority were adults aged 20 to 40. The mortality was the inverse of most flu seasons, when deaths fall most heavily on the elderly and the under-fives.
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But perhaps the biggest unanswered question is why the Spanish flu proved so deadly to young adults. Here, present-day science has hypotheses but no good answers. One suggestion is that the elderly enjoyed greater immunity because, as children, they had been exposed to a pandemic virus with a similar genetic makeup to the H1N1 Spanish flu. Conversely, those aged 28 and over had an immunological blind spot because their first exposure had been to the 1890 “Russian flu”, an H3 virus with a completely different configuration of genes. Or it could be that the unusual mortality pattern seen in 1918 was the result of an as yet unidentified environmental exposure or stressor peculiar to young adults at the time.
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It is astonishing that all those nurses, in the photograph with the article, did not suffer a hysterical response ( or should that be a mass hysterical response), caused by the risks of nursing that potentially fatal illness, and believe themselves to be suffering from the same disease. Perhaps psychiatry can explain why they were so much more psychologically robust.
 
chrisb said:
It is astonishing that all those nurses, in the photograph with the article, did not suffer a hysterical response ( or should that be a mass hysterical response), caused by the risks of nursing that potentially fatal illness, and believe themselves to be suffering from the same disease. Perhaps psychiatry can explain why they were so much more psychologically robust.
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A good point but surely when they caught the flu they would have realised they had flu, and so would the doctors. So they just carried on as normal, having flu.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
A good point but surely when they caught the flu they would have realised they had flu, and so would the doctors. So they just carried on as normal, having flu.
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Certainly, but this was an unusual variant leading to high mortality. Why would not the serious risk of contracting a highly infectious, often fatal, illness induce a hysterical reaction in a young suggestible and apprehensive group, if that was the reaction in the case of a less infectious illness with lower mortality.
 
chrisb said:
Certainly, but this was an unusual variant leading to high mortality. Why would not the serious risk of contracting a highly infectious, often fatal, illness induce a hysterical reaction in a young suggestible and apprehensive group, if that was the reaction in the case of a less infectious illness with lower mortality.
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Because in the case of flu the doctors said - oh it's bad flu. So people coped as best they could, knowing what was wrong.

For the Royal Free situation the doctor said 'golly this looks like some weird neurological illness that we have never seen before - what could it be!!!?'

So it was all the doctors' fault if it was anyone's 'fault', I would suggest.
 
chrisb said:
It is astonishing that all those nurses, in the photograph with the article, did not suffer a hysterical response ( or should that be a mass hysterical response), caused by the risks of nursing that potentially fatal illness, and believe themselves to be suffering from the same disease. Perhaps psychiatry can explain why they were so much more psychologically robust.
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Well perhaps the nurses were actually men in drag, hence immune to hysteria.
 
Being female is not a risk factor for becoming hysterical and developing symptoms of disease. It is an idea that became embedded in medicine in mysogenistic days when women were seen as the weaker sex with weak suggestible brains and otherwise decent doctors believe it is true with no evidence because it was presented to them as fact. I argued with my GP, a very good, kind doctor but he was not convinced. A paediatric psychiatrist on the other hand, who knew more about it, was quite clear that while the mind may have a small influence he would be very reluctant to attribute serious illness to thoughts alone.

The thread "https://www.s4me.info/threads/what-...he-past-but-were-later-proven-not-to-be.2129/" has copies of what was written about women who had MS and RA.

Throughout history women have got on with life while men were busy building careers and believing they were superior.
 
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