The Great Influenza of 1918

In 1918, during World War I, a mysterious epidemic shocked people all over the world. The disease was influenza and it devastated and alarmed the American military and citizens because so many people died from it at such a rapid rate; it was a strange, unique epidemic in that it killed young adults, even the soldiers fighting in the war. The medical community had little idea of what was happening. The scientists raced to find a serum to control the epidemic from becoming devastatingly worse and ultimately made a scientific breakthrough with the discovery of a vaccination.

In just four short months of the influenza outbreak, it had killed approximately twice as many people worldwide as had been killed in the four years of World War I: over 21 million. The victims of the flu were attacked suddenly. They experienced symptoms such as headaches, chills, fever, strenuous breathing and coughing. And pneumonia usually followed. A strange aspect of the epidemic, however, was that victims were drowning in their own fluids resulting in death. Their lungs would fill with a bloody fluid, causing their vital organs to collapse, and the victims would die from suffocation. William Welch, an American physician and pathologist, observed that the virus manifested itself in an influenza that did not follow normal patterns, and that it was unlike any previous influenza ever reported that he feared this was some kind of new infection or plague, which only made the citizens who weren't studying medicine even more frightened, as stated in The Great Influenza, "If Welch feared it, those who suffered with the disease were terrified by it."

Baffled by the disease and the uniqueness in that it targeted the young and healthy, worldwide the scientists raced against the disease to stop or at least control the outbreak. Scientists needed to understand the epidemiology of influenza, learn its pathology and figure out what the pathogen was causing influenza. Once they were able to work out any of those answers then they can develop a serum or vaccine. And so began their race. It became clear that it was an airborne pathogen, spreading too fast for it to be considered a person-to-person contracted disease. Meanwhile, Richard Pfeiffer insisted he had discovered the cause, the etiological agent, of influenza. He named it Bacillus influenza. In their quest to control and stop the epidemic, scientists were forced to either agree with Pfeiffer or disprove his finding. One European investigator wrote, "No influenza bacilli have been found in cases here, therefore the disease was," he concluded, "not influenza."

Laboratories all over the world had turned to influenza. Oswald Avery was requested by Welch to find the cause of influenza. William Park and Anna Williams, in New York, devoted all their energies towards a vaccine to combat the disease. Whilst they were experts on vaccine therapy, along with the