Mobilising Flu: The Medical Research Council and the Genesis of British Virus Research

Abstract

Contrary to the idea that the 1918–1919 pandemic was ‘forgotten’, this chapter shows how it was used by the British Medical Research Council (MRC) in efforts to scientifically modernise approaches to influenza and other infectious diseases through the development of experimental pathology. At the core of this agenda was a new ‘scheme’ of virus research, established in 1922 to establish ways to determine the role of viruses in diseases that had stymied bacteriology. The pandemic was pivotal. The inability of bacteriologists to settle the aetiology of influenza, coupled with investigations during the pandemic into the possible role of a ‘filterable virus’, served as a rationale for constructing virus research as new medical scientific field. The National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) was positioned as the hub of the virus scheme, with innovations in experimental pathology at its foundation. By translating the pandemic into a crucial matter for modern medical science and the state, the MRC ensured that influenza figured centrally in the making of virus research as a new field and of virus diseases as a new class of medical problem that were shown to be major factors in the health of nation and empire. A defining characteristic of medical virus research in general, and the NIMR approach in particular, was the essential role of research animals as proxies for studying human diseases. This characteristic required a strongly comparative approach to virus diseases that involved working across species. Despite limited initial success with this approach with influenza, the MRC scheme illustrates how memories and experiences of the pandemic were kept alive and mobilised for the transformation of British medical science in the interwar period.