by Carrie Mylott

Created on: March 05, 2007   Last Updated: April 18, 2007

One of the aspects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic that I am most keenly interested in is the fact that it seems to have been almost entirely dismissed from public awareness. In her book, Epidemic! The 1918 Influenza Pandemic, Stephanie True Peters discusses several reasons why this may be the case.

Her introduction, "The Forgotten Pandemic", briefly discusses the significant fact that "...this flu is hardly ever mentioned anywhere. Few history textbooks discuss it. People who lived through it were close-mouthed about it for years. News publications printed after the pandemic relegated it to their back pages, if they included it at all" (Peters ix). The book goes on to discuss the spread of the disease, which infected a staggering 2 billion people worldwide in little more than a year (Peters 8). "The final estimate of Americans who died of the flu comes close to 650,000 [including both domestic and overseas numbers]. That figure is greater than the number of American soldiers killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined" (Peters 8).

Fear would be a normal reaction to an event so devastating, especially when coupled with newly mechanized warfare. But is fear, or even emotional upheaval in mourning lost loved ones, enough of a motivation to abandon discussions of the event entirely? Peters believes this was a considerable factor. "It seems most likely that people simply didn't want to remember. Nightmarish scenes of dead bodies stacked like piles of wood, of young men and women turning blue and gasping for breath, of frustrated doctors and nurses helpless to provide comfort and care these memories were too painful to recall, and so were pushed away" (Peters 43).

Certain qualities of human behavior are universal. Competition, perhaps the most ancient drive in each of us, rewards the victor. Most people don't like to recall situations in which they've lost. This thought process provides another two reasons why this particular event has been purged from our collective consciousness. First, the fact that the disease dwindled of its own accord, and not due to medical intervention, probably contributed to the medical community's desire to "forget the flu" (Peters 44). The medical professionals of the early 20th century worked tirelessly to discover the cause of, and a cure for, this disease. The fact that they failed to discover either was not due to a lack of effort, or improper methods. However, many people must have felt betrayed

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