The+Effects+of+the+1918+Flu+Epidemic+on+Wheeling

On March 11, 1918 at Fort Riley, Kansas the camp cook reported to the infirmary with flu-like symptoms. By noon 107 soldiers were sick. Within two days 522 people had this new flu and within a week every state in the country reported the illness. Misnamed the Spanish flu, this virus killed more than ½ a million people in the United States alone and 20 to 25 million worldwide.

The word influenza came from the Italian phrase “influenza di freddo” which means “influence of the cold”. Flu epidemics had been known since Hippocrates first reported an epidemic in Athens in 412 BC. Some believed that the flu was caused by a sudden atmospheric shift and Fort Riley had experienced just such a “shift” when the famous cavalry post saw gale-force winds blow tons of prairie dust and stifling smoke from burning horse manure through the camp.

Never the less, Spain got the blame for the flu outbreak of 1918 because their epidemic occurred in May and June of that fateful year and not censuring their news, were blamed as the origin of the flu although thousands had already died in the United States…the true origin of the virus. It is more likely that when the American troops landed in Europe they brought this terrible plague with them.

This strange virus probably originated with birds, was passed to pigs, and then to humans. It mutated in the trenches and spread worldwide. Although it lasted only eighteen months, this flu killed more than all the wars of this century, but in the flurry of war bond drives, and troop ship movements, most Americans quickly forgot or were unaware of just how devastating was this illness. For every American who died of the flu, 50 more contracted it and lived. The country was divided into those afflicted with the disease and those who endeavored to save them.

At the height of the epidemic the Surgeon General Dr. Victor Vaughan said, “The faces wear a bluish cast, a cough brings up the blood stained sputum. In the morning, the dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like cordwood”. In a camp just outside Boston he witnessed 63 deaths in one day. In September 12,000 died. In October 195,000 died. The Surgeon General went on to warn “If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth within a few weeks.”

At that time in our history, flu was not a reportable disease anywhere in the United States and many states did not even bother to file death statistics with the federal government. Here in West Virginia, we only know that in h 1917 there were 9,262 deaths statewide, in 1918 there were 13,745, by 1919 there were only 745!

In Wheeling the newspapers front-page headlines were only of “The Great War”. But hidden away in the back pages were short notices about local boys in army camps up and down the East Coast who were succumbing to this frightening disease. A young man from Marshall County sent to Camp Lee, NJ who was noted for his physical prowess and had never been sick a day in his life had died of the illness. The son of a prominent farmer from West Alexander took ill at Camp Lee, VA and his parents rushed to his bedside. The brother of Miss Alice Young, a nurse at Camp Sevier, Greenville SC received a telegram saying to come at once as she was not expected to live and was suffering from pneumonia.

The cause of this illness was as yet undiscovered and viruses were unheard of until the invention of the electron microscope in 1930. The discovery of penicillin was ten years in the future and very little could be done to help the thousands of people, mostly soldiers, who were dying daily from this strange malady. Many of the deaths appeared to be from pneumonia, but that was only the final ravaging state of this frightful illness and not a separate disease as originally thought. Patients were literally drowning in their own body fluids.

September 3 saw the first civilian case documented in Boston as Babe Ruth and the Red Sox beat Chicago in the World Series a week later. Babe himself fell ill on October 25th, but his condition was not serious.

By October 3, 1918 a “vaccine” was produced in New York City, but only enough for 1,500 people….it proved ineffective. Illinois tried 18 different vaccines without success!! The 35,000 masks ordered by the New York Health Department did little more to keep the disease from spreading. From September 13th to October 4th 113,737 cases were reported nationwide. In Boston alone 1919 people died in 24 hours. In one week a total of 5,000 died in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia where 528 bodies piled up in a single day awaiting burial.

“Hunt up your woodworkers and cabinetmakers and set them to making coffins”, was the advice of one health department. “Then take your street laborers and set them to digging graves.”

Meanwhile the editor of the Wheeling News Register commented on the value of fresh air as a preventative and that windows should be kept open. But with winter approaching, this was ridiculously impractical although the editor felt that “these simple measures will do much to prevent the spread of the disease”. Three cases were reported in Wheeling and the paper carried a caution not to spit on sidewalks, use others’ towels and to “stay away from the sick.” It was further warned that kissing should take place “only when absolutely necessary”.

The local Red Cross took up the battle and appealed to undergraduate nurses to volunteer their services helping with the many cases quickly appearing in Wheeling. By October 6, the Health Department had ordered all meetings and amusements discontinued, all schools and churches closed, all funerals and weddings were to be private, use of the street cars should be curtailed and hospital visits to patients were discontinued. D. M.B. Williams, head of the Health Dept. further warned the population “Don’t sneeze, cough, or spit and do not go near crowds.” The City Council approved the orders.

Still no news of the epidemic had knocked the War news from the front page as the war raged on. Ads for curatives began to appear such as that for “Anti-Flu” at 25 or 50 cents per bottle from Baers Pharmacy at 12th and Chapline. One ad proclaimed, “Don’t take chances with Spanish flu, but get Nostriola, balm or liquid, at your druggist.” Nostriola is antiseptic, cleansing, opens air passages and prevents disease of nose, throat and bronchial tubes.” Another read, “Protect yourself against the Spanish influenza. The use of Coleman’s Magic Balm will greatly aid in warding off this disease. It helps keep the nose and throat clean destroying any germs which may enter these passages. Be careful of your health. Get a tube of this today. Price .35 cents,”

A druggist in North Carolina had invented Vicks Vapo Rub and claimed to have cured several cases of flu using the ointment. This may have led to the City Council’s belief that one way to prevent the spread of the flu on the streetcars of Wheeling was to spray each car at the end of day with eucalyptus oil.

The biggest worry to the populous at the time seemed to be whether they would reach their quota of sales of Liberty Bonds since meetings were now banned. Full page ads for Liberty Bonds took precedence over small articles issued by the Health Dept on how to prevent the spread of the disease or even long list of local boys dying in army camps.

The Surgeon General’s office was reporting over 100,000 cases in the nation’s army bases with 2,148 deaths. Saloons and public amusement centers such as poolrooms, dance halls, and theaters had been closed for some time in the state of Pennsylvania where the illness threatened the war efforts of Bethlehem Steel which was being badly affected by the epidemic. Failure to obey this order was considered a misdemeanor.

“The first churchless Sunday in Wheeling’s long and honorable history passed off with all the decorum expected of a law abiding community,” the paper reported. The towns of Martins Ferry and Bridgeport were about to impose their own closing orders and so the citizens of Wheeling were advised by their newspaper that “this being the last opportunity for the parched gentry to lubricate’ they had best appear at the saloons with their buckets to be filled with beer. Wheeling now had 36 cases (14 in 24 hours) as purports of locals dying far from home continued. John Frew Cowl died of the flu on the battleship Kentucky while Louis Guild Swift, the wife of an army instructor who had visited her husband at camp, died soon afterwards. Ohio Valley General Hospital’s whole third floor was filled with patients suffering from influenza as notices of “quiet weddings” continued on the social pages. The editor of the society page bemoaned the lack of society events this season.

Then on October 14, the Health Department of Belmont County declared a quarantine against the city of Wheeling since “Wheeling as had 75 –80 cases while we have not one.” Dr. Williams of Wheeling was appalled and quickly sent a telegram to the Surgeon General saying the quarantine was not practical or warranted and was merely retaliation for closing Wheeling saloons. He further claimed that interfering with employees going to work in vital industries on the Ohio side of the river was tantamount to treason. Four days later Surgeon General Rupert O. Blue required Martins Ferry and Bridgeport to lift their bans saying that “interstate quarantine cannot be legally imposed” by anyone but himself.

The local business page carried the following article: “According to a veteran local wholelsale produce dealer, last week was the quietest in more than a score of years in Wheeling. The quietness was due to the fact that across the river towns had quarantined against Wheeling on account of the Spanish influenza and it was practically impossible to deliver any produce over there, while there were no Ohioans to come over on this side to patronize the local markets. Consumption of food by locals was also down with so many ill”.

Dr. Blue, the Surgeon General had problems of his own. With a budget of less than $3 million and only a handful of trained doctors and researchers to help him, he watched helplessly as the flu spread from the army bases to the general public. Today’s Public Health Service budget is over $13 billion and has 42,000 Civil Service doctors, scientists, technicians and administrators not to mention the amazing Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Blue warned the public, “If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth within a few weeks”.

This being an election year, the newspaper editor noted that politicians were still out campaigning and Wheeling’s Saturday night crowd was out in full force on Market Street despite several regulations of Wheeling’s Health Department that “Pa Wheeling and his numerous family avoid street crowds!”

October 20 the Federal Government took control of the epidemic and required all new cases and deaths be reported directly to them. Unfortunately, many cases were not reported, as people did not want the dreaded quarantine signs posted on their front doors. That same day the epidemic reached its peak in Wheeling with 36 new cases reported, “nearly twice that of any other day showing that the spread of the disease is materially unchecked and that the situation is far from under control.” A second telegram from the Surgeon General to the cities across the river was necessary to get the ban lifted against Wheeling Citizens crossing the river as the paper noted that “the quarantine effected businessmen on both sides of the river wile the saloon trade of Brideport which relies almost entirely on its clientele from Wheeling received an awful thump”.

By October 23 a slight improvement was noted nationwide as only 2773 cases per 24 hours were reported against 3,007 the day before. Deaths had fallen from 404 to 392. Locally Dr. Williams reported that the highest number of cases per day was 47.

Life went on as the Court Theater announced an upcoming dramatic production a play called “The Unmarried Woman” in anticipation of the lifting of the ban. This play would have “matinees for ladies only” and was deemed suitable for people of good taste. Ads for laxatives and long underwear as precautions against the illness were plentiful. The local paper carried instructions for the first observance of Daylight Savings giving advice on how to stop clocks for an hour.

The War was drawing to a close as the New Your City phone system was shut down for a lack of operators and rumors were rampant that this epidemic had be “started by German agencies”. Another rumor said that the Germans had seeded Boston Harbor with germs. In Germany the flu was called “Blitz Katarrh” and Konrad Adenauer then Mayor of Cologne, Germany claimed it left thousands, “too exhausted to hate”. Causes were as varied as remedies with people blaming air stagnation, coal dust, fleas, distemper of cats and dogs, and even dirty dishwater. Posters put out by the Colgate Company warned people to chew their food thoroughly and avoid tight clothing and shoes.

Remedies abounded and ranged from garlic and camphor balls, to kerosene on sugar, boneset tea, gargling with a mixture of boric acid and sodium bicarb or chlorinated soda to so stuffing salt up your nose and wearing goose grease poultices. Some believed in the curative powers of red-pepper sandwiches wile others thought tiny doses of strychnine or something called Bulgarian blood tea was the answer. People sprinkled sulfur in their shoes, wore vinegar packs on their stomachs, tied slices of cucumber to their ankles or carried a potato in each pocket. A shotgun placed under your bed was believed to draw out the fever. A mother in Portland, Oregon buried her four-year-old girl from head to toe in raw, sliced onions.

Celebrities were not immune to the disease and famous survivors included FDR, Mary Pickford, Woodrow Wilson, and John Pershing. Playgrounds everywhere heard the refrain

“I had a little bird and its name was Enza I opened the window and in-flew-Enza”

Panic and pandemonium reigned as law enforcement in some cities became enraged. In Chicago, murder charges were laid against landlords whose sick tenants died after their heat was turned off for nonpayment of rent. In New Your City 500 people were arrested for violating “Spitless Sunday” while doctors were fined for not reporting new flue cases. A Chicago laborer crazed by the illness of his wife and four children screamed, “I’ll cure them my way” and slit their throats.

Author Jack Fincher, writing in the Smithsonian magazine described the gradual selflessness that ensued. He wrote “businesses, hotels, fraternity houses, and private clubs, even the exclusive Vanderbilt farm in Rhode Island donated their premises for emergency hospitals. Private automobiles and taxicabs, as well as limousines of society matrons, chauffeured medics and served as ambulances. Off-duty police and firemen drove ambulances and carried stretchers. Department stores distributed relief supplies and opened phone bans so people could make emergency calls. Volunteers canvassed house-to-house searching for those too weak to cry out for help”.

Finally the epidemic was making front-page news locally as the headline read “Flu Worse Than War”. Forty-six cities with a total population of 23 million reported 82,306 deaths. Total cases in Wheeling from October 4 to November 17th were 1,200. Local theaters were pressuring the City Council for relief as their businesses were suffering and hug crowds were reported at the Court to see a new musical call “Miss Blue Eyes”, a vaudeville show at the Victoria featured a new black-faced comedienne, and the Virginia theater showed D.W.Griffith’s “The Great Love” starring Lillian Gish. Theater managers were arrested for defying the ban against public amusement wile the public demanded an end to the ban against public gatherings. A Dr. Woodworth, posing as a representative of the Surgeon General’s office but actually employed by the state of Ohio, was threatening to again impose quarantine against Wheeling as Wheeling now reported 1,418 cases of flu, 77 in the last 24 hours. Nationwide the final figures of reported deaths were nearly half a million. By November 7 a false report of peace in Europe caused Wheeling to by “torn wide open” by happy celebrants. “The long pent-up enthusiasm of Wheeling broke out yesterday on the unconfirmed report that an armistice had been agreed upon by the Entente allies and Germany, and pandemonium reigned the news was received” the report read.

“Wheeling’s enthusiasm laid dormant until night, when the people, brushing aside the edict of the Health Department guarding against the influenza, started in to hold an old-fashioned celebration which reminded one of the night of a close national election or the revelries of Halloween”.

‘THE WAR HAS ENDED” screamed the headline of the Monday, Nov 11, 1918 paper and despite the ban local residents again took to the streets in celebration. By November 28th the ban was lifted ending one of the most frightening eras in Wheeling’s history.

It has been said by public health official that a flue epidemic of this magnitude has occurred every thirty years in this country. With the last epidemic in 1968, this is the year (2000) we are predicted to have one of the worst plagues ever. But today’s flu epidemics are much less lethal. The Asian flu of 1957 killed only 7,000 Americans while the 1968 Hong Kong flu killed 28,000.

Could it happen again?..Doctors at Walter Reed hospital discovered the remains of the virus in a tissue sample of a soldier who had died in 1918 and also from still-frozen bodies of buried victims under the permafrost in Norway. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has identified material of the flu virus from frozen remains of Native Alaskans buried 80 years ago. So at least scientists will know what they are dealing with if it reappears, but the Ebola virus and other common viruses of this century are much more lethal and spread more easily because of easy air travel.

Since the virus mutates from birds to pigs to humans we could be nurturing it in cell cultures, which can only be grown in egg yolk. Vaccines are prepared the year before from strains in other hemispheres. We are no better prepared to fight the virus now than then, but can fight the resulting pneumonia if it becomes bacterial. Because of the swift way that viruses can mutate and bacteria become quickly immune to antibiotics, we could be in for another siege.

Recent newspaper reports of the slaughter of thousands of chickens in the markets of Hong Kong in an attempt to allay the spread of another avian flu make us aware that even today we are in danger. My final advice??? ….GET YOUR FLU SHOT and don’t kiss anyone unless it is absolutely necessary!

(For the Wheeling Historic Society by Kate Quinn, June 2000)