An excellent essay by Laura Spinney on how the Spanish flu of 1918 changed India ~ around 14-20 million people were killed, and laid low many others including Mahatma Gandhi who wrote when ill: “all [my] interest in the living had ceased”.
caravanmagazine.in/history/spanis…
caravanmagazine.in/history/spanis…
The Global Spread of the Spanish Flue ~ 2nd wave, 1918
[see the figures of estimated mortality: ~6% of Gujarat’s population died; see South Africa and Alaska]
[see the figures of estimated mortality: ~6% of Gujarat’s population died; see South Africa and Alaska]
“Emergency hospital created to accommodate Spanish flu patients at the US Army’s Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918”
the great Austrian artist Egon Schiele left behind an unfinished painting: The Family.
“Edith died in October 1918, when she was 6 months pregnant with their first child. Schiele died 3 days later, having painted The Family in the interim. He was 28 years old.”
“Edith died in October 1918, when she was 6 months pregnant with their first child. Schiele died 3 days later, having painted The Family in the interim. He was 28 years old.”
Eskimo children in Alaska ~ who were called ‘flu orphans’
Paris 1919:
Participants & victims of flue
* Wellington Koo (Chinese delegation) lost his wife to it.
* T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia,’s father was dying of it.
* David Lloyd George had it in 1918.
* Georges Clemenceau maybe had it.
* Woodrow Wilson had the flue.
Participants & victims of flue
* Wellington Koo (Chinese delegation) lost his wife to it.
* T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia,’s father was dying of it.
* David Lloyd George had it in 1918.
* Georges Clemenceau maybe had it.
* Woodrow Wilson had the flue.
“In 2013, a company that specialises in catastrophe modelling, AIR Worldwide, tried to take account of all these factors, and came up with an estimate of between 21–33 million deaths worldwide, if a flu as dangerous as the 1918 strain struck.”
[electron micrograph recreation]
[electron micrograph recreation]
All of the above thanks to Laura Spinney’s excellent medical history ~ highly recommended, fascinating, and an extraordinary tale of how fragile all life really is.
And if you are interested ~ a slightly older thread on an older disease front that hit India. The great Plague of Bombay in 1890s.
