[The Spanish influenza pandemic]

Abstract

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, so-called Spanish influenza, spread to almost all nations worldwide. This outbreak is thought to have killed 25 million people, although some have claimed that the epidemic resulted in as many as 40 million deaths. This pandemic was a particularly dramatic event, because it occurred at the end of World War I, when both armies and the civilian population, in nations involved in the war, were exhausted. In Italy 600,000 people are estimated to have died of Spanish influenza. Together with the death of 650,000 soldiers during the war, this had a major demographic impact. We describe the course of the epidemic in Italy as a whole and in Bologna in particular. In Bologna and in its province we analysed the lists drawn up at the end of the World War I by the Central Records Office in Bologna, which coordinated research into causes of death of soldiers engaged in the conflict. We also examined the trend of burials at Certosa in Bologna in the first decades of the last century in order to establish, during the two-year period 1918-1919, the impact of the epidemic upon annual mortality. In Bologna the impact of the epidemic, albeit important in comparison to other situations, was not particularly dramatic. No special preventive measures were adopted, with the exception of isolating seriously ill patients in a former school converted by the military authorities into a hospital. Family doctors worked together actively with the city's medical authorities when the epidemiological survey was carried out.