Jowhara7

Hi Jim - I know this has nothing to do with the Civil War era, but I thought is was interesting enough to send to all my genie friends.  See ya Thurs.

Jacque

“I think it is helpful in genealogy to know about a severe epidemic.  It might explain to us why several people in a family died about the same time.  This is something that I came across that I thought might be helpful in our local NC newspaper.”

By mid-October, Dr. D.C. Speas of Bethania had learned to read the deadly signs.  His patients' faces turned a dark brownish-purple.  They started to cough up blood, and their feet turned black.  Though he continued to prescribe aspirin to try to control the high fever and "dover's powder," Speas knew that it was hopeless.

The end would come with his patients frantically gasping for breath.  They drowned in the fluid that filled their lungs. The only doctor between Winston-Salem and Tobaccoville during that fateful October in 1918, Speas signed four death certificates in one day, dozens during the dreadful month.

What was killing Speas' patients wasn't some exotic disease or a pestilence from the Dark Ages.  It was the flu.  A particularly virulent strain---uncontrolled by vaccines or antibiotics, which were then unknown---swept like a firestorm across the US in the fall of 1918 and then went on to consume the rest of the world.  By the time it played itself out a year later, the flu had killed an estimated 25 million people, making it the worst pandemic in recorded history.

Most died in eight weeks.  As a comparison, World War I, which was then raging in Europe, would claim 9.2 million battle deaths in four years of fighting.

In America, 25 percent of the population was infected and almost 700,000 people died.  Whole Eskimo villages in Alaska were wiped out.  That October, the deadliest month in the nation's history, almost 200,000 Americans --- delirious with fever and struggling for breath --- died, their bodies stacked up at funeral homes and hospitals because there weren't enough coffins to go around.

Though called the Spanish flu, the plague actually started innocently at an army base in Kansas, where thousands of soldiers became sick in March 1918.  They all recovered within a few days.  It was this mild form of the disease that traveled to Europe that spring with American troops heading off to war.  Soldiers on the Western Front fought off the flu throughout the early summer.  But it was in the mud and grime of the trenches, where thousands of men lived in close contact, that the virus mutated into the deadly form that re-crossed the Atlantic in July.  Some have since speculated that the mustard gas then used to bombard the troops and now known to cause genetic mutations triggered the change.

People first started dying in the port cities of the East Coast---Boston, New York and Philadelphia and then Norfolk, VA and Wilmington, NC.  The beginning of 30 days of lung-congested, feverish terror began Oct. 1, when Boston reported that 202 people had died of flu and pneumonia.  State health officials advised cities to close schools, churches and other buildings where people gathered in great numbers.  Fresh air became a fetish.  Streetcars kept the windows open, and the sick often were placed on the porch to sleep.  Residents were warned to avoid crowds and handshakes.  If couples had to kiss, they were told to do so through a handkerchief.  Gauze masks were common pieces of apparel.

The epidemic crested locally Oct. 19, when 1,293 cases were reported in Winston-Salem in 24 hours.  The number of new cases and deaths gradually declined.  Though sporadic outbursts would continue through the spring of 1919, the pestilence had moved on.  But not without leaving its mark: 13,644 North Carolinians had died, 210 in this county --- the highest death toll in the state.

It is not related to the above, but when the white man first came to America, there was a severe problem.  He brought diseases to the Indians that they had never been exposed to, and it almost wiped them out.  In return, the Indians gave the white man syphilis.  It was never in Europe until Columbus and his crew returned, and then it spread throughout, killing thousands. Everyone knows about "smallpox" but few know that it was called "small" because it was nothing compared to the real "pox," which was the name for syphilis.  "A pox upon you!" in Shakespeare's writings meant "I hope you get syphilis!"  After a few generations, humans were able to overcome the deadly effects.  Although still very serious, few die from this terrible disease any more.

Few young people are aware that dermatologists a few years ago were called "dermatologists and syphilogists" as syphilis was their main concern.   The symptoms imitated many other diseases.  During the draft for WW II, the large number of men infected with syphilis was astounding.  Treatment was started for them and their loved ones.  Health departments in just about every county set up syphilis treatment stations.  People had to come in and lie down on a cot, and have bismuth and arsenic dripped slowly into their veins with an IV.  It took weeks of this treatment before the person could be released.  Although syphilis is still very much with us, now treatment is simply a shot or two of Bicillin, a type of penicillin.

I can remember as a child that I could not go swimming or mixing with strange kids, due to the polio epidemic.  That was pretty dreadful also, until the vaccine was developed.  It would be good to get the dates for the past epidemics across the country, to help us in our genealogy.

John Wayland

{{Jacque}}  Great article - thanks for sharing....

Editors Note 9/28/2020 - This article is especially timely today due to the great pandemic that the world is suffering from now, having often been compared to the LAST great epidemic, the Spanish Flu, discussed above.