Spanish flu symptoms. Spanish flu: the truth about the great epidemic

About a hundred years ago, in the spring of 1918, the First World War number two began. Historical fact, although little known: two wars - both first. And both are catastrophic. The first pandemic of the Spanish flu (Spanish flu) in less than two years (1918-1919) put to the graves, according to various estimates, from 25 to 50 million people. 17 million died on the battlefields then. The virus war turned out to be much more brutal than the imperialist slaughter.

The name “Spanish flu” (Spanish flu) arose for a very simple reason. Because Spain did not participate in the First World War.

As a non-belligerent country, it had relatively mild censorship in 1918. Something neither Germany, nor France, nor even the “foremother of democracy” Great Britain could boast of. Much less Bolshevik Russia, where freedom of speech was interpreted in a counter-revolutionary sense.

In general, the first publications about a widespread infectious disease appeared in Spain. Not surprisingly, the “new” flu was called Spanish. The disease is Spanish. Already in May, newspapers wrote that the number of cases had exceeded eight million. In Madrid, every third resident was sick. Including members of the government and even King Alfonso XIII.

The capital's shops and institutions were closing due to a lack of able-bodied staff. Tram service stopped. Madrid was paralyzed.

The disease deprived a person of strength, put him to bed with symptoms acute cold. But oddly enough, it was considered harmless. At first. Like, lie down for a week or two - and again, great!

New York, 1918. Photo: Wikipedia

In August 1918

Until this month new disease didn't pay attention. Europe had enough other worries: the war was not over yet.

But it was in August, as today’s experts would say, that the genetic structure of the virus changed, causing disease. Following the spring wave of the pandemic, the second, autumn wave began. Much more scary.

The breadth of its distribution was amazing. Victims with non-classical symptoms mysterious illness were detected simultaneously on both sides of the English Channel, in West Africa, in Russia, in the northern USA, and in South America, both in Japan and in Australia. The second wave was followed by a third - at the beginning of 1919. Residual outbreaks of the pandemic, although not so dangerous, were recorded until the mid-twenties. Until then, in many countries, from America to Russia, handshakes were considered bad habit. There were posters: “Handshakes are cancelled.”

Epidemiological calculations made subsequently showed that at the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, at least 550 million people worldwide had contracted the Spanish flu. At the end of 1918, according to the Swiss sanitary services, in Europe for every three inhabitants there were two sick or recovered. This is an unprecedented scale; modern medicine has never encountered anything like it.

The colossal mortality rate of the Spanish flu was also striking: up to 20 percent. True nature influenza was still unknown at that time. There was not enough accurate data to separate it from other “cold-related” diseases. But it was clear that the disease was seasonal and developed under some external influence.

It is not without reason that in Germany, since the Middle Ages, influenza has been called influenza - from Latin it is translated as “influence.” At first, the astrological point of view prevailed: illness was influenced by the unfavorable location of the stars. Then the reason was “grounded”, linking it with the onset of cold seasons.

In general, influenza has been studied for centuries. Already by the beginning of the twentieth century, firm epidemiological conclusions were made: in prosperous years the mortality rate was at most 0.1 percent, in unfavorable years up to 2.5 percent.

And here - 20 percent! This alone would be enough to suggest: under the guise of the flu, humanity received something else, much more terrible!

Graph of deaths in America and Europe from the Spanish flu in 1918–19. Image: National Museum of Health and Medicine | Wikipedia

The true plague of the twentieth century

Spanish Flu death toll reaches 25 million for a long time was considered "final". But it was derived indirectly, based on population censuses conducted in the 1920s in many countries.

The census results were still in doubt. It was clear that they were inaccurate, incomplete, “mixed” with war victims, and heavily censored.

At the beginning of this century, an independent global historical and epidemiological study was conducted, the results of which were published in the American journal Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Here is the specified number of 50 million victims. Moreover, according to the authors, this is the minimum acceptable value. The real number of victims could be 70 or even one hundred million people.

The scale of the 1918-19 pandemic is now being compared to the Black Death of 1348, a plague pandemic that reduced the population of Europe by a third.

Concert hall in Oakland (California), used as a hospital during the influenza epidemic, 1918. Photo: Wikipedia

“German spies are to blame for everything!”

There was another non-classical feature of the Spanish flu, which strengthened suspicions that it was not just a disease, but either God’s punishment or secret weapon. The unusual selectivity of the disease and the nature of the complications, which represented the main danger, were alarming.

Classic flu severely affects mainly older people. And the Spanish woman mowed down the young. In Europe at the end of 1918, the number of deaths between the ages of 15 and 40 was two to three times higher than the number of deaths over the age of sixty. The disease was deliberately targeted at conscription age (and there was a war going on)!

The main complication of Spanish flu is severe pulmonary inflammation backed by action pathogenic bacteria. Critical phase: lung failure and death. The specific dark blue color of the skin of the deceased indicated acute oxygen starvation. Panic rumors spread about pneumonic plague, the bacteria of which were allegedly released by the Germans along with poisonous gas.

This was a “logical” explanation at the time. Deadly action bacteria were already well known, but almost nothing was known about viruses. And even more so about viral damage to the body’s immune system, which becomes “open” to bacterial infection.

Pulmonary complications leading to death “directly” pointed to the Germans. Gas attacks using chlorine and others toxic substances, undertaken by the German army back in April 1915, caused blindness, painful skin inflammation - and most importantly, as one eyewitness put it, they “completely burned the lungs.”

In France, Belgium, and England there were persistent rumors that “the Germans, having released gas with bacteria, poisoned the fish in the Channel” (English Channel). The disease was transmitted to people through fish. However, not only rumors circulated, but also official conclusions. The archives contain documents similar to the report sent to the command by one senior US sanitary officer: “The infection could have been spread by German agents through poisoned canned food or poisonous gases released in the theater of operations, in places large cluster people, etc.”

Seattle police during the Spanish Flu, December 1918. Photo: Wikipedia

Pot calls the kettle black. And whose pig would grunt

The version about the machinations of German agents was not confirmed. It also did not fit in with gas attacks, which the German command abandoned due to low level"mobility" of the new weapon and because of its inaccurate action (gas hit soldiers on both sides of the front line).

By the way, in Germany the number of victims of the Spanish flu (over six hundred thousand people) was equal to the total number of victims of the main opponents in western front- France and Great Britain. Was it really possible that Germany first of all “harassed” itself, and only then its enemies?..

General Erich Ludendorff, who had led all German operations since 1916, argued that it was the “all-encompassing influenza” that prevented Germany from taking advantage of the successes of the spring offensive of 1918, the last breakthrough before the collapse of the Western Front.

Objective epidemiological studies conducted since the 30s (they continue today) showed that the true focus of infection was not in Europe (and certainly not in Spain), but in America. Specifically: Haskell County, Kansas. The Fenston military camp was located here, where over fifty thousand military personnel were trained before being sent to Europe.

America entered World War I in 1917. The main transfer of expeditionary forces occurred at the beginning of 1918. The first wave of the “Spanish” flu reached Europe with American virus carriers! And the further lightning-fast spread “was due to the high concentration and mobility of the troops participating in the hostilities,” wrote the famous virologist and Nobel laureate Frank McFarlane Burnet forty years ago. World War"one-one" really gave birth to the "one-two" war.

A military hospital in Kansas during the Spanish Flu. Photo: National Museum of Health and Medicine | Wikipedia

Enemy name - A/H1N1

A familiar name, isn't it? Kansas history contains several curious details which acquire special significance in the present era.

Influenza was transferred to the Fenston military camp from the local population. Haskell County physician Loring Miner testified that at least three of his patients with unusual flu symptoms were drafted into the army in early 1918 and sent to Fenston. Already in March, over a thousand people were sick in the camp, 38 died.

The unusual nature of the Haskell flu was, according to Miner’s descriptions, the accelerated development of the disease (it was not for nothing that the Americans called the Spanish flu “three-day fever”), significantly more acute symptoms and high probability lethal outcome. Miner appealed to the medical authorities, the Public Health Service (PHS), demanding that they take effective measures against the spread of dangerous disease. But PHS officials ignored his appeal.

As a result, by August 2,800 people had died from influenza in the United States; in September, the number of victims jumped to twelve thousand.

The virus that caused the pandemic was only isolated in 1930. This was done by the American virologist Richard Shope at the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton. And by the way, he isolated the virus from pork meat.

And more recently, in 2005, geneticists and virologists reconstructed it. The virus belongs to the notorious A/H1N1 subtype, which affects ducks, turkeys, pigs, humans and some other representatives of the animal world.

When the virus first enters the body, it suppresses the immune system, which causes subsequent (unimpeded) penetration of lung bacteria and the risk of pulmonary failure.

Entry to the tram must only be done with a protective mask. Seattle, 1918. Photo: Wikipedia (CC0 Public Domain)

What is Spanish, what is “Russian”

Today, scientists have come to the conclusion that viruses of this “uncharacteristic” subtype have been “walking” through livestock and poultry farms in the northern states and the Midwest of the United States for a long time. Periodic outbreaks of the disease in humans occurred here, weakened, however, by the general dispersion of the population.

By the twentieth century, the situation had changed: dispersion disappeared, but the US presence in the world sharply increased. Residents of Haskell County fell ill with the flu after eating pork (or poultry) meat. The disease spread to the army, and the army rushed overseas...

IN modern times subtype A/H1N1 caused a pandemic swine flu 2009-10. Before this, there were swine flu epidemics in 1947 and 1951. And in 1977, the “Russian flu” epidemic broke out (as it is called in the West). It most likely originated from Northern China - but then spread through the territory of the USSR. Mostly children and adolescents born after 1957 were affected. The reason is that from that time on, the world was dominated mainly by the Asian flu (viral subtype A/H2N2). Young people have developed immunity against it. And there was no immunity against the disappeared (for the time being) A/H1N1.

The mechanism of spread of the second wave of the “Russian flu” in 1989 was approximately the same.

As we see, there is no end to the virus war.

Edvard Munch. Self-portrait after the Spanish Flu, 1919. Image: Wikipedia

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In 1918-1919 (18 months), approximately 50-100 million people, or 2.7-5.3% of the world's population, died from the Spanish flu worldwide. About 550 million people, or 29.5% of the world's population, were infected. The epidemic began in the last months of the First World War and quickly eclipsed this largest bloodshed in terms of casualties.

The 2009 influenza pandemic was caused by a virus of the same (A/H1N1) serotype.

Picture of the disease, name “Spanish flu”

In May 1918, 8 million people or 39% of its population were infected in Spain (King Alfonso XIII also suffered from the Spanish flu). Many flu victims were young and healthy people age group 20-40 years (usually only children, older people, pregnant women and people with certain medical conditions are at high risk).

Symptoms of the disease: Blue colour face - cyanosis, pneumonia, bloody cough. In later stages of the disease, the virus caused intrapulmonary hemorrhage, as a result of which the patient choked on his own blood. But mostly the disease passed without any symptoms. Some infected people died the day after infection.

Egon Schiele (1890–1918), Public Domain

The flu got its name because Spain was the first to experience a severe outbreak of the disease. According to other sources, it is not yet possible to determine exactly where it appeared, but most likely Spain was not the primary epidemic focus.

The name "Spanish flu" appeared by accident. Since the military censorship of the fighting parties during the First World War did not allow reports of the epidemic that had begun in the army and among the population, the first news about it appeared in the press in May-June 1918 in neutral Spain.

Distribution, mortality rate

Through technological progress (trains, airships, high-speed ships), the disease spread very quickly throughout the planet.

In some countries, public places, courts, schools, churches, theaters, and cinemas were closed for a whole year. Sometimes sellers prohibited customers from entering stores. Orders were filled on the street.

Military regime was introduced in some countries. One US city has banned handshakes.

unknown, Public Domain

The only populated place that was not affected by the pandemic was the island of Marajo at the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil.

In Cape Town, a train driver reported the death of 6 passengers on a section just 5 km away. In Barcelona, ​​1,200 people died every day. In Australia, a doctor counted 26 funeral processions in one hour on one street alone.

National Museum of Health and Medicine, Public Domain

Entire villages from Alaska to South Africa. There were cities where there was not a single one left healthy doctor. There weren't even gravediggers left to bury the dead.

U.S. Army photographer, Public Domain

They dug mass graves using steam shovel. People were buried in dozens without a coffin or funeral service. In its first 25 weeks, the flu killed 25 million people.

The massive movement of troops from World War I countries accelerated the spread of influenza.

Death toll from Spanish flu

The overall result is that the Spanish flu killed 41,835,697 out of 1,476,239,375 people, which is 2.8% (the final figure is inaccurate as it does not include some countries.

Also, for some countries it is extremely difficult to determine the exact number of deaths).

Photo gallery

Start date: 1918

Expiration date: 1919

Time: 18 months

Helpful information

Spanish flu or "Spanish flu"
fr. La Grippe Espagnole
Spanish La Pesadilla

Famous victims

• Egon Schiele, Austrian artist.
• Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet. Edmond Rostand, French playwright.
• Max Weber, German philosopher.
• Karl Schlechter, outstanding Austrian chess player.
• Joe Hall, famous Canadian hockey player, Stanley Cup winner.
• Francisco and Jacinta Marto - Portuguese boy and girl, witnesses of the Fatima miracle (the third girl witness survived).
• Vera Kholodnaya, Russian film actress, silent film star.
• Yakov Sverdlov - Russian revolutionary, after the Bolsheviks came to power - Chairman of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) - supreme body Soviet state.
• Klimova, Natalya Sergeevna Russian revolutionary.

Modern research on the virus

In 1997, the US Army Institute of Molecular Pathology (AFIP) obtained a sample of the 1918 H1N1 virus from the corpse of an Alaska Native woman buried in permafrost 80 years earlier. This sample allowed scientists in October 2002 to reconstruct the gene structure of the 1918 virus.

The epidemic wave of 1957 was strictly monoetiological in nature, and more than 90% of diseases were associated with the H2N2 influenza virus. Pandemic Hong Kong flu developed in three waves (1968, 1969 and 1970) and was caused by a virus of the H3N2 serotype.

On February 21, 2001, a number of scientists decided to conduct a genetic study of the Spanish flu virus. They believed that the uniqueness of the clinical picture of the disease, the presence of various complications, the appearance of cases of the disease with a picture of general severe intoxication and, finally, the high mortality rate among patients with pulmonary forms - all this made doctors think that they were not dealing with the usual influenza, but a completely new form of it. . This point of view was held until the genome of the Spanish flu virus was deciphered at the end of the 20th century, but the knowledge obtained with such difficulty baffled researchers - it turned out that the killer of tens of millions of people did not have serious differences from the less dangerous pandemic strains of the influenza virus known today in any respect gene.

When the staff of the US Army Institute of Pathology in Washington (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington) began these studies in the mid-1990s, they had at their disposal: 1) formaldehyde-fixed tissue sections of American military personnel who died during the 1918 pandemic; 2) the corpses of members of the so-called Teller mission, which tragically died almost in in full force from the Spanish flu in November 1918 and buried in the permafrost of Alaska. The researchers had at their disposal modern methods molecular diagnostics and the strong belief that characterization of the virus's genes can help explain the mechanisms by which new pandemic influenza viruses replicate in humans.

It turned out that the Spanish flu virus was not an "epidemic novelty" of 1918 - its "ancestral" variant "entered" the human population around 1900 and circulated in limited human populations for almost 18 years. Therefore, its hemagglutinin (HA), which recognizes cell receptor, which ensures the fusion of the virion membrane with the cell membrane, was subjected to “pressure” from the human immune system even before the virus caused the pandemic of 1918-1921. For example, the HA1 sequence of the Spanish flu virus differed from the closest “ancestral” avian virus by 26 amino acids, while the 1957 H2 and 1968 H3 differed by 16 and 10, respectively.

Another mechanism by which the influenza virus evades the immune system is by acquiring regions that mask the regions of antigens recognized by antibodies (epitopes). However, the modern H1N1 virus has 5 such regions in addition to the 4 found in all avian viruses. The Spanish flu virus has only 4 conserved avian regions. That is, he could not “go unnoticed” by a normally functioning immune system. Typically, pandemic researchers pay little attention to another important Spanish flu syndrome: cardiovascular disease. Rapidly growing lesion of cardio-vascular system, sharp drop blood pressure, confusion, hemorrhages developed in patients even earlier than complications from the lungs. Contemporaries of the pandemic attributed these symptoms to the action of toxins from an unknown bacterial pathogen. But today it has been established that the genome of the influenza virus does not contain toxin genes with a similar mechanism of action.

In terms of the number of victims, this pandemic has left behind even the plague. No one expected that the human immune system's response to a new influenza virus could be so drastic and deadly.

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed approximately 50 million people worldwide. For comparison, 15-16 million died during the First World War.

Unlike seasonal influenza, a pandemic (worldwide epidemic) involves influenza for which people do not have immunity. Instead of affecting older people with weakened immune systems, the 1918 flu was especially deadly among younger people with stronger immune systems.

They were “killed” by their own the immune system. According to molecular pathologist Jeffrey Taubenberger, nearly half of all influenza deaths in 1918 were among people 20 to 40 years old. Their immune systems overreacted to the virus and destroyed their lungs with a sharp increase in fluid containing white blood cells.

Spain was the first to declare the disease a pandemic, although its geographic origin remains unknown. Because of the millions of deaths in Spain, the flu was given the name Spanish. There is speculation that the virus may have been circulating around the world for several years before the 1918 pandemic broke out.

The first confirmed outbreak of influenza was reported in the United States at a military base in northeastern Kansas on March 11, 1918. A few hours after the first soldier reported that he was sick, dozens of sick people poured into the infirmary. By the end of the day, hundreds of soldiers had fallen ill. Within a week, 500 people died.

The flu spread across the country at lightning speed. 2 million people were mobilized for the war in Europe. The virus has spread to France, England, Germany and Spain. The battleship King George was unable to go to sea for three weeks in May with 10,313 sick sailors. The virus has spread to India, China, Japan and the rest of Asia. At the end of August the flu new strength began to rage in Boston. This time he became even more deadly. Some people dropped dead on the streets, some were able to survive for several days from the moment of infection. The cough was so strong that the lungs burst to the point of bleeding. During the first week of September, approximately 100 people died daily at Camp Devens. One of the camp doctors wrote: “Special trains took away the dead for several days. There were no coffins, and the corpses were piled up. It was a terrible sight to see the long rows of dead young men, killed not in battle.”

By the end of September, 50,000 people in Massachusetts had been infected with the flu.
In Philadelphia, after a large meeting of people at which money was collected for the war, 635 people immediately fell ill. To stop the spread of the disease, all churches, schools, theaters and others were closed in the city. public places, but in the first week of October, 289 people died on one day.

In New York, 851 people died in one day. There were so many deaths in San Francisco, Chicago and other cities that funerals were banned because they also attracted large crowds. Navy nurse Josie Brown writes: “The morgues were packed to the ceiling with stacks of corpses. There was no time to treat patients, measure temperature, blood pressure. People had such nosebleeds that blood was shooting all over the room.”

There was no vaccine against the disease. Government officials tried to protect residents, even closing churches. In Ogden, Utah, officials closed entry into the city. No one could enter or move in without a doctor's certificate.
In Alaska, the governor closed the ports and posted guards to protect them. But these measures did not work either. In Arctic Nome, 176,300 Alaska Natives died.

With 195,000 deaths from influenza, October 1918 was the deadliest month in US history. The horrors of the pandemic continued into November, when nearly 115,000 people were infected in California.
Stores canceled New Year's sales, sports matches were canceled, and residents put on gauze masks.

An ambulance transports victims of the Spanish Flu (St. Louis, 1918)

Those who died from the disease are buried on the banks of the Labrador River (Canada)

The year 1918 for humanity was marked by the most terrible pandemic of the Spanish flu or Spanish flu, which claimed the lives of almost 100,000,000 people across the planet. Scientists have now managed to understand the causes of the influenza pandemic.

What is Spanish flu?

The name “Spanish Flu” was given to the Spanish flu because the Spanish media were the first to announce the pandemic. According to modern scientific data, this is one of the mutational varieties of the influenza virus, the most aggressive of all that humanity has known.

In Alaska, scientists have found the frozen body of a woman who turned out to be a victim of the Spanish flu in 1918. Thanks to the climatic conditions in which the body of the deceased patient was located, her remains were well preserved in the icy depths of Alaska. There was a great opportunity for scientists to extract the virus from her body, study it and draw conclusions about the influenza viruses that today attack people around the world every year. The Wikipedia encyclopedia has a more complete description of the Spanish flu disease.

It turned out that the Spanish flu belongs to the human influenza virus, it was called H1N1. Distinctive characteristic Its aggressiveness turned out to be the ability to quickly, literally with lightning speed, attack the lungs and destroy their tissue. Today this virus is not as aggressive as it was during the year of the pandemic. However, scientists have been concerned about how much it is capable of mutating today and how dangerous it could be for humanity.

The Spanish flu epidemic took a huge number of lives.

During terrible epidemic, the virus attacked mainly adults, healthy people under 40 years of age. Once infected, they died within 72 hours, choking on their own blood.

As a rule, each disease has its own characteristics and stages of development. But the Spanish flu does not have them. The course of the disease was unpredictable. The patient could die within the first day or after three days. At that time there was no antiviral therapy. Treatment was aimed at controlling symptoms. The symptoms all resembled known diseases Immediately, the doctors did not know why or how to treat the patient.

There were no normal laboratories then, nor express tests. While they were dealing with the manifestations of the disease, the Spanish flu had already managed to take the life of the sufferer. Hygienic conditions, lack of food and vitaminization methods also played a role in the spread of the pandemic and such large quantities deaths.

Spanish Flu Symptoms

The clinical picture of the Spanish flu plunged many doctors into quiet horror. Flu symptoms developed so quickly and were so varied that it was not clear what to do. Today, influenza viruses have been sufficiently studied and understanding the symptoms allows us to quickly establish accurate diagnosis.

The Spanish flu manifests itself with a very rapid development of the disease.

The Spanish flu is still spreading around the world today, but the virus has changed and mutated. It has become much softer and less dangerous considering how far progress has come. Healthy man with a strong immune system can survive the Spanish flu much easier than it would have been in 1918. Moreover, there may not be any complications.

The general clinical picture and symptoms are as follows:

• sharp headache;
• aches;
• sharp decline blood pressure;
• tachycardia;
• severe weakness;
• sudden jump temperatures up to critical levels;
• confusion;
• cough mixed with blood and sputum;
• nausea and vomiting due to severe intoxication caused by the virus;
• autoimmune responses to the virus.

All symptoms developed in the first three hours. Today, with such flu-like symptoms, an ambulance is urgently called. The patient is taken to the department intensive care so that the disease does not cause complications.

Complications

Failure of the cardiovascular system, kidneys, transient aggressive pneumonia and pulmonary hemorrhage occurs. In fact, all patients die only from complications.

Normally, the virus leaves the body quickly when the immune system suppresses it. Recovery occurs within a week. The temperature can last up to three days at the onset of the disease. Then the body begins to cope with the virus.

You shouldn’t wait for the outcome to be favorable on your own! Need to call urgently ambulance if the symptoms listed above appear! With dangerous strains of influenza, the countdown is on the minutes!

Treatment of Spanish flu

Treatment is the same as for regular flu. Good effect therapy with immunomodulators provides. Today, such a flu can be cured in a hospital setting, and not even suffer from complications. The main thing is to start treatment on time!

When acute symptoms You need to act very quickly, otherwise you may be late with the treatment of Spanish flu.

New generations antiviral drugs, aimed at all known influenza viruses, mitigate the course of Spanish flu disease. At the core general therapy lies in the principle of maintaining the immune system and helping it fight the virus.

Necessary treatment measures:

• reception antiviral medicine in the first two days;
• bed rest;
• decline physical activity;
• drinking plenty of fluids softening and fortified liquids of warm temperature;
• additional intake of increased doses of vitamin C;
• taking medications that strengthen the heart muscle;
• taking vitamins for the heart (asparkam);
• antipyretics if the temperature exceeds 38 degrees (paracetamol);
• taking medications that soften mucus and help it pass away easily;
• for asthmatics, additional intake of antihistamines and anti-asthma drugs;
• hygiene;
• ventilation of the room, compliance with air humidity standards.

Video: Racing against the killer virus - the Spanish flu.

Prevention

The most best prevention– this is strengthening the immune system and vaccination, if the work involves constant interaction with society. Vaccination will help avoid infection or guarantee a less severe course of the Spanish flu disease if another Spanish flu epidemic suddenly sweeps the world.

Although the Spanish flu is a long time ago, a flu pandemic may still be a reality. Every year the flu virus

The Spanish flu is a pandemic of influenza. The disease swept the entire planet in the first two decades of the 20th century. Influenza was already known at that time, similar to it clinical picture Hippocrates described it back in 412 BC. By 1918, the world had already suffered several epidemics of this disease, but it had never seen one as terrible as the Spanish flu.

The occurrence of the disease

It is generally accepted that the first cases of this pandemic were observed in the winter of 1918 in the United States. The Spanish flu disease migrated to Europe with American recruits who were mobilized for the First World War. The outbreak of the disease began in the spring and summer of 1918. Its victims were both the allies (Americans, French, British), as well as German troops and European civilians. At a time when wartime censorship tried to prevent the disclosure of any information about the illnesses of soldiers, peaceful Spain trumpeted terrible disease, which affected approximately 39% of the population of this country. This was the reason for the emergence of this particular name for the pandemic.

Three stages of disease spread

The “Spanish flu” disease rolled over the world gradually, in three “waves”. The first, which was observed from March to July 1918, with high degree There were relatively few deaths from the disease. During the second, from September to December, deaths there was a maximum quantity. In the third wave, from February to April 1919, the death rate from the pandemic dropped significantly.

Number of victims

During the year and a half of the “rule” of the “Spanish flu”, every fifth inhabitant of the planet suffered from the disease throughout the world. According to various sources, from 2 to 5% of the world's population died. In the USA, the Spanish flu disease caused more than half a million deaths, in France - about 400,000, in England - approximately 200,000. In the countries of the East (Japan and China) - from 200 to 300 thousand each. Some tribes in Africa died out completely from the Spanish Flu. The number of Eskimos due to the disease decreased by 60%. According to statistics, the pandemic has affected Russia to a lesser extent. The data may not be accurate enough due to incorrect accounting due to what was happening at the time. civil war. The level of development of the disease in Russia began to decline in May 1919, and by the summer there were practically no cases of infection.

Symptoms

“Spanish flu” is a disease, a photo of the causative agent of which is shown in the article. Effective medicinal products capable of overcoming these pathogens, there was none at that time. Those infected with the Spanish flu suffered greatly from its symptoms. The first symptoms in patients manifested themselves in the form of headaches, fever, and fatigue. In this state, people still assumed that everything would be fine, hoping that the symptoms were just an ordinary migraine or overwork. But when the patient’s skin gradually acquired a bluish tint, there was no doubt about the diagnosis. More late stage“Spanish flu” was characterized by bleeding in the lungs. Sometimes it was so strong that the person choked. Most victims of the pandemic died a day after infection. It was not possible to find out the origin of the virus then.