Spanish Influenza's Cause Remained a Medical Mystery for Decades

Some years ago, when this article was researched and written regarding the impact of  the Spanish influenza of 1918 on Northwest Ohio, the cause of the pandemic was still unknown:


It was Christmas 1918. Only weeks before, the victory in Europe brought an end to years of horrible warfare. But rather than joy, Americans were in the full grip of grief. 

In the United States, a killer more deadly than the machines of war appeared earlier that year at Fort Riley, Kansas. Known as the Spanish influenza, the highly contagious virus spread like wildfire.  In Ohio, the organism first appeared at Camp Sherman near Chillicothe.  Housed in crowded, sometimes unsanitary conditions, hundreds of soldiers  began to rapidly develop high fevers, chills, headaches, and muscle pains. Within a month the "flu" had gone nationwide, sped on its way by troop transports and military supplies.

Courtesy of PBS American Experience

By fall, a deadlier strain emerged. Victims of the second "wave" experienced respiratory congestion and severe coughing. Most drowned in their own fluids that quickly filled their lungs. The deadly flu hit so rapidly that entire families were wiped out in a matter of days. Mysteriously, the disease seemed to take its greatest toll among the young and the most physically fit.

Some speculated the "killer" strain had begun on the Western Front where thousands of soldiers were bogged down in trench warfare. Hardest hit were the metropolitan areas and ports where troops departing for the war and returning home unknowingly infected the general population.

Nurses Caring for Flu Victims at Walter Reed
Courtesy of Library of Congress

The small towns of Northwest Ohio did not escape. The epidemic overwhelmed health officials. Schools, theaters, and churches were closed. Public funerals, gatherings, and even spitting were banned. Thousands wore gauze masks. Sandusky's Providence and Good Samaritan hospitals and the Sandusky Soldiers' and Sailors' Home were desperate for nurses. There was no recognition of the pandemic from President Woodrow Wilson, who was focused solely on the war and the outcome of its treaty. 

Ohio Memory 
Courtesy of the Sandusky Library

 As more and more Sanduskians fell ill, medical qualifications went by the wayside; anyone willing to care for victims was welcome. The Erie County Red Cross set up a hospital in the Elks Lodge on East Adams Street. Local restaurants cooked meals, volunteers shuttled supplies, and residents raised money for food and equipment. But two months later, with funds and caregivers exhausted, the emergency facility was forced to close.

Nurses at the Sandusky Soldiers and Sailors Home

Ernst Niebergall Collection, Hayes Presidential Library and Museums

Quarantines and medicines only slowed the flu. With no vaccine on the horizon or useful medicines, enterprising quacks found an opening. They soon filled the "Sandusky Register" and other small town papers with "for sure cures" like Dr. Sage's Catarrh Remedy, Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery, vegetable tablets, sugar-coated May apples, aloe, fig syrups, and "anuric" pills. 

When it was all over, some 675,000 Americans were dead; 26,000 were Ohioans, including 638 who died in Erie County, 400 in Toledo, 500 in Columbus, 1,000 in Cincinnati, and 2,000 in Cleveland. As the Spanish flu began to run its course, everyone wanted to put the tragedy behind them. Health officials had failed to find the cause. 

To keep abreast of Ohio's efforts to slow the COVID-19 virus go to:
https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/home

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Note: It was not until 2007, that a strain of the avian virus was discovered as the cause of the Spanish influenza of 1918. 

Dr. John Hultin, a forensic pathologist, knew of a small Alaskan village where 72 out of 80 Inuit residents had perished from the flu in 5 days. As a graduate student, he had visited the grave site. He remained haunted by the failure to find the cause of the flu that had killed tens of millions worldwide. When he learned that medical advances had made it possible for biologists to unlock the virus's genetic sequence, he traveled again to the village in 1997. 

With permission from Inuit villagers, he dug into the mass grave. He took samples from the lungs of one of the victims preserved in the permafrost.  

Hultin's tissue samples were used to unlock the mystery of the 1918 Spanish influenza.