Quotes from Alfred W. Crosby

Nature's standard operating procedure, pairing a population explosion with a population crash.

When did the pandemic end? That is more difficult to say, for while flu pandemics often begin abruptly, they normally disappear only after several renewals of virulency and then a long tailing off. The pandemic of Spanish influenza subsided and sank below the level of general and even scientific perception in the United States and almost everywhere else in the world in spring 1919.

But the 1920 edition of the Spanish influenza virus was an attenuated variant of the original strain, and the human population was more resistent than in 1918 and 1919.

and braying multitudes of wild asses. The

The pandemic of Spanish influenza is easier to measure if it is restricted to the years of 1918 and 1919 and its farewell performance of 1920 is excluded.

Today such news would galvanize the Medical Corps, but in 1918 it attracted only a modicum of attention.

The case and death rates of communities which had "strict" closing orders were no better and often worse than elsewhere. However, public health officials had to do something, and closing up theatres, schools, pool halls, and even churches was the style in fall 1918.

Spanish influenza had rounded the globe in four months following its appearance in the United States and fully earned a promotion from epidemic to pandemic. It had infected so many that, for all its mildness, it had doubtlessly killed tens of thousands already. In its next wave it would kill millions.

The characteristic of the influenza virus that makes it so dangerous and gives rise to epidemic after epidemic is its extreme mutability. It perpetually is changing the nature of its outer surface, which antibodies, the body's most important defense system, must zero in on to be effective.

The dollar sign is exalted above the health sign," said Hassler, referring to the influence of the merchants on the supervisors' decision.73

Perhaps the strength of American society in 1918 was only the brief by-product of the war spirit. In the next year or so race riots, bombings, and a hysterical red scare would give proof that Americans were not always filled with mutual love and respect, but for that moment in fall 1918, when everyone in the nation had a fever and aching muscles or personally knew someone who had, Americans did by and large act as if they were all, if not brothers and sisters, at least cousins.

July the incidence of influenza in the AEF had reached its lowest point since early spring. Only 99 men died of flu and pneumonia that month, and the number was expected to be even lower

No other influenza before or since has had such a propensity for pneumonic complications. And pneumonia kills.

World War I killed upwards of fifteen millions, wreaked immeasurable physical, social, and psychic damage, and left most of the citizens of the belligerent powers with a deep conviction that war must in some way be prohibited.

Some spent years undermining Pfeiffer's theory, and others—among them many of the most brilliant scientists of the era—took off after other alleged villains, spending untold thousands of man-hours in the crucially important but thankless task of proving themselves wrong.

European emigrants and their descendants are all over the place, which requires explanation.