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Critics accurately called it the Epidemic That Never Was. In February 1976, a 19-year-old Army recruit, Pvt. David Lewis, reported to his drill sergeant at Fort Dix that he was feeling lethargic. Shortly thereafter he died of something similar to the deadly Spanish influenza that killed 20 million people in 1918 and 1919. After four other soldiers at Fort Dix became ill, Congress decided to enact an ambitious $135 million program with the lofty goal to innoculate all 220 milliion people in the United States against Swine Flu--so called because it was usually found in pigs. This photo shows president Gerald Ford signing the legislation into law. It proved to be wholly unnecessary. Only one person, Pvt. David Lewis, died of the flu. Many more are believed to have died from adverse reactions to the innoculations. The end result was national cynicism about all innoculation programs.
Tags:
Swine
flu
Added: 18th November 2007
Views: 300
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Posted By: Lava1964 |
 
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1918 had been a very good year, factories across the were running at capacity, wages were good and work was plentiful. With the war winding down, the future looked bright.
With news from the front and the celebrity hoopla over the latest Liberty Loan drive drawing all the attention, a small notice from the Surgeon General's Office warning of a spreading influenza epidemic was easy to overlook.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351.
More than one-fifth of the world's population suffered from some of the disease's deadly symptoms. The Influenza Pandemic claimed the lives of more than 21,000,000 people worldwide, including 600,000 in America alone. As the afflicted died by the thousands, the survivors lived in fear.
photos
The Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/
Middle Tennessee State University
http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history...
University of Minnesota
http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/index.php
Tulane University
http://tulane.edu/
The National Museum of Health and Medicine
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/medtour/nm...
Oral Histories
Talking History - I Remember When
Professor Charles Hardy III - producer
http://www.talkinghistory.org/hardy.html
I can not recommend the above site too highly, one of the most outstanding websites for teachers and students of all facets of history
Music
A River Runs Through It
Mark Isham
http://www.isham.com/
Fanfare for the Common Man
Aaron Copeland
Conceived and Produced by
Dale Caruso
Tags:
1918
Influenza
Pandemic
WWI
Disease
Death
Added: 25th September 2008
Views: 102
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Posted By: dalecaruso |
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