The influenza of 1918: Evolutionary perspectives in a historical context

Abstract

The 1918 influenza pandemic was the deadliest in known human history. It spread globally to the most isolated of human communities, causing clinical disease in a third of the world's population, and infecting nearly every human alive at the time. Determination of mortality numbers is complicated by weak contemporary surveillance in the developing world, but recent estimates put the death toll at 50 million or even higher. This outbreak is of great interest to modern day epidemiologists, virologists, global health researchers and evolutionary biologists. They ask: Where did it come from? And if it happened once, could it happen again? Understanding how such a virulent epidemic emerged and spread offers hope for prevention and strategies of response. This review uses historical methodology and evolutionary perspectives to revisit the 1918 outbreak. Using the American military experience as a case study, it investigates the emergence of virulence in 1918 by focusing on key susceptibility factors that favored both the influenza virus and the subsequent pneumococcal invasion that took so many lives. This article explores the history of the epidemic and contemporary measures against it, surveys modern research on the virus, and considers what aspects of 1918 human and animal ecology most contributed to the emergence of this pandemic.

Keywords: World War 1; influenza; social determinants of health; virulence.

Figure 1.

Homeward-bound troops crowd the Agamemnon’s deck in 1919, arriving at New York Harbor. ID # 3004, U.S. Naval History and Heritage Archive

Figure 2.

Post card of Camp Funston, 1918. In the author’s possession

Figure 3.

Emergency hospital during the 1918 influenza epidemic, Camp Funston, Kansas” (NCP 1603). OHA 250: New Contributed Photographs Collection, Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine