Die Spanische Influenza 1918/19. Einflüsse des Ersten Weltkrieges auf Ausbreitung, Krankheitsverlauf und Perzeption einer Pandemie

Abstract

Spanish Influenza 1918/19. The influence of the First World War on the spread, course of disease and perception of a pandemic. This reconstruction of the Spanish Influenza is based on a few selected contemporary daily newspapers and German weekly medicial journals, amended by official reports on the pandemic and corrected by historical studies and the present state of research of virology, etiology and epidemiology of this disease. Because of censorship in the belligerent countries the May 1918 influenza epidemic in Spain became the first public sign in the contemporary papers, although the pandemic started two months before in the USA. Troop movements and other supplies spread the disease. Quarrantine was impossible, but slowed down the infection close to the front lines. Crowding at military quarters, on transport and centres of war economy favoured infection The level of morbidity and mortality rates of the military population showed the same variance as in the civilian population The likely causative influenza-A-virus (HSw₁N₁) was typically dangerous for young and vigorous people, who were at the risk to develop lethal complications. The pandemic of Spanish Influenza killed more than 25 million people, but the perception and memory of the local epidemics were displaced by the First World War and former dreadful epidemics.