Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Viralising Flu: Towards a New Medical Consensus

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Modern Flu

Part of the book series: Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History ((MBSMH))

  • 79 Accesses

Abstract

When researchers at the NIMR announced the discovery of the first human influenza virus in 1933 it was against an historical backdrop shaped by approaches to influenza that had been developed by medical professionals since the 1890s. Rather than a straightforward story of scientific progress, making influenza viral took many years and involved building new social relations and a new medical consensus. The challenges were many and took time to resolve. They stemmed in good part from the virus itself. Considerable work had to go into rendering the new agent, understanding its nature as a pathogen, and establishing it as the specific cause of influenza and its practical value for the different groups who already claimed expertise over the disease. New technical innovations and findings had to be incorporated into existing approaches. Negotiating the different roles of both the virus and virus research was part of the process of viralising influenza. Collaboration with medical scientists and clinicians, doctors, and public health experts was essential to positioning virus research—and virus workers—as indispensable to the identification and control of influenza. Crucial to this process was the ability of NIMR researchers to move their work from the realms of the laboratory to the realms of hospital and public health medicine. This chapter traces the ways in which serological tools fashioned using ferrets and mice were applied to laboratory, clinical, and public health problems and helped to align the viral identity of influenza with the interests and practices of medical professionals who claimed ownership over the disease. The practical value of these tools proved critical to forging a new consensus on the viral identity of influenza.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The studies were published final report, C.H. Stuart-Harris, C.H. Andrewes, and Wilson Smith, A Study of Epidemic Influenza: With Special Reference to the 1936-Epidemic, Medical Research Council, Special Report Series, No. 228 (London: HMSO, 1938).

  2. 2.

    Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1932–1933 (London: HMSO, 1934), 39.

  3. 3.

    C.H. Andrewes, P.P. Laidlaw, and Wilson Smith, ‘Influenza: Observations on the Recovery of Virus from Man and on the Antibody Content of Human Sera’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, XVI (1935), 566; Stuart-Harris, Andrewes, and Smith, A Study of Epidemic Influenza, 8.

  4. 4.

    John Eyler, in an account of the making of flu virus in the United States that parallels mine, has argued that the metaphor of ‘construction’ too readily presupposes virus researchers’ following and realizing a master plan, regardless of nature’s constraints. John M. Eyler, ‘De Kruif’s Boast: Vaccine Trials and the Construction of a Virus’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80 (2006), 437. I take the ‘problem of construction’ to be a social process in which ‘facts’ produced in and through local contexts become universalized or gain general application. Both nature and culture act as constraints on the construction and generalisation of medical scientific knowledge. See, Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge, 98–100.

  5. 5.

    Stuart-Harris, Andrewes, Smith, A Study of Epidemic Influenza, 3.

  6. 6.

    I take the concept of the ‘right tools for the job’ from Adele E. Clarke and Joan H. Fujimura, ‘What Tools, What Job? Why Right?’, in idem. (Eds.), The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3–45.

  7. 7.

    Sharon Leigh-Star and James R. Griesemer, ‘Institutional Ecology, Translation, and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–1939’, Social Studies of Science, 19 (1989), 387–420. My approach has greater affinities with Ilana Löwy, ‘The Strength of Loose Concepts—Boundary Concepts, Federative Experimental Strategies and Disciplinary Growth: The Case of Immunology’, History of Science, XXX (1992), 371–396.

  8. 8.

    Report of the Medical Research Council for the Year 1928–1929, Report of the Medical Research Council (London: HMSO, 1930), 15.

  9. 9.

    Ton van Helvoort, ‘A Bacteriological Paradigm in Influenza Research in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 15 (1993), 3–21.

  10. 10.

    Michael Worboys, ‘Vaccine Therapy and Laboratory Medicine in Edwardian Britain’, In John V. Pickstone (Ed.), Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1992), 87.

  11. 11.

    ‘England and U.S. Suffer Epidemic of Spanish Influenza’, The China Press (31 December 1932), 1.

  12. 12.

    ‘Influenza in Britain Has Struck 500,000’, New York Times (15 January 1833), 18.

  13. 13.

    NA FD1/3356 Influenza, Thomson to A. Salisbury McNalty, 20 January 1933.

  14. 14.

    NA FD1/3356 Influenza, Thomson to A. Salisbury McNalty, 20 January 1933.

  15. 15.

    NA FD1/3356 Influenza, Sir John Collie to Fletcher, 1 February 1933.

  16. 16.

    NA FD1/3356 Influenza, Halley Stewart to Fletcher, 2 January 1933. Based on the current Retail Price Index, the value of £2500 was worth approximately £140,053.44.

  17. 17.

    ‘The Epidemic of Influenza: Hints on Avoiding Infection’, The Observer (15 January 1933), 17.

  18. 18.

    Dr. Charles Russ, ‘Have You Seen the “Flu Germ?”’, Daily Express (27 January 1933), 8.

  19. 19.

    There are a number of accounts of the NIMR move into influenza: C.H. Andrewes, ‘Influenza Virus and the Beginnings of Its Study in the Laboratory’, The Medical Press (1951), 225; F.M. Burnet, Changing Patterns: An Atypical Autobiography (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1968), 121–130; W.I.B. Beveridge, ‘Unravelling the Ecology of Influenza a Virus’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 15 (1993), 23–32; F.M. Burnet, ‘A Portrait of Influenza’, Intervirology, 2 (1979), 201–214; Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic (1989), 286–290; Edwin Kilbourne, ‘Pandora’s Box and the History of the Respiratory Viruses: A Case Study of Serendipity in Research’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 14 (1992), 299–308; David A.J. Tyrell, ‘Discovery of Influenza Viruses’, in K.G. Nicholson, R.G. Webster, and A.J. Hay (Eds.), Textbook of Influenza (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 19–26.

  20. 20.

    ‘PURSUIT OF HEALTH: A specialist symposium on Influenza PREVENTION & CURE’, South China Morning Post (7 March 1933), 1.

  21. 21.

    Ilana Löwy, Virus, Moustiques et Modernite: La Fievre Jaune au Brasail entre Science et Politique (Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, 2001), 186.

  22. 22.

    Thomas Rivers, ‘Viruses and Koch’s Postulates’, Journal of Bacteriology, 33 (1937), 3.

  23. 23.

    For contemporary reviews of serological tests for viruses, see W.W.C. Topley and G.S. Wilson, The Principles of Bacteriology and Immunity (London: Edward Arnold, 1936), 959–962; F.M. Burnet, E.V. Keogh, and D. Lush, ‘The Immunological Reactions of Filterable Viruses’, Medical Journal of Australia, 15 (1937), 227–368; C.E. van Rooyen and A.J. Rhodes, Virus Diseases of Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 70–96.

  24. 24.

    P.M.H. Mazumdar, ‘The Antigen-Antibody Reaction and the Physics and Chemistry of Life’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 48 (1974), 1–21.

  25. 25.

    A. Grafe, A History of Experimental Virology (London: Springer-Verlag, 1991), 70. For a popular account of Sternberg’s work, see, Greer Williams, Virus Hunters (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1960), 95–100.

  26. 26.

    Grafe, A History of Experimental Virology, 70.

  27. 27.

    A. Cambrosio, D. Jacobi, and P. Keating, ‘Ehrlich’s “Beautiful Pictures” and the Controversial Beginnings of Immunological Imagery’, Isis, 84 (1993), 662–699; Lenoir, ‘A Magic Bullet’; P.M.H. Mazumdar, Species and Specificity: An Interpretation of the History of Immunology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 205–210; A.M. Silverstein, A History of Immunology (London: Academic Press, 1989), 64–66.

  28. 28.

    Mazumdar, ‘The Antigen–Antibody Reaction’, 3–8.

  29. 29.

    Mazumdar, Species and Specificity, 114–117.

  30. 30.

    Jonathan Liebenau, ‘Paul Ehrlich as a Commercial Scientist and Research Administrator’, Medical History, 34 (1990), 65–78; Paul J. Weindling, ‘From Medical Research to Clinical Practice: Serum Therapy for Diphtheria in the 1890s’, In John V. Pickstone (Ed.), Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1992), 72–83.

  31. 31.

    A. Grafe, A History of Experimental Virology, 72.

  32. 32.

    Burnet, Keogh, and Lush, ‘The Immunological Reactions of Filterable Viruses’, 240.

  33. 33.

    Pauline M.H. Mazumdar, ‘“In the Silence of the Laboratory”: The League of Nations Standardizes Syphilis Tests’, Social History of Medicine, 16 (2003), 437–459.

  34. 34.

    Laidlaw and Dunkin also developed and used complement-fixation tests.

  35. 35.

    C.H. Andrewes, ‘Immunity in Virus Diseases’, Lancet (2 May 1931), 989–992. C.H. Andrewes, ‘Immunity in Virus Diseases’, Lancet (9 May 1931), 1046–1049; W.W.C. Topley, An Outline of Immunity (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1933), 254–273.

  36. 36.

    Wilson Smith, ‘Progress in Viral Immunology’, British Medical Bulletin, 9 (1953), 176–179.

  37. 37.

    Samuel P. Bedson, ‘Some Reflections on Virus Immunity’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, XXXI (1937), 61. For Levaditi’s virus work, see K. Kroker, ‘Creatures of Reason? Viruses at the Pasteur Institute during the 1920s’, in K. Kroker, J. Keelan, and P.M.H. Mazumdar (Eds.), Crafting Immunity: Working Histories of Clinical Immunology (London: Routledge, 2008), 145–164.

  38. 38.

    Burnet, Keogh, and Lush, ‘The Immunological Reactions of Filterable Viruses’, 240.

  39. 39.

    W.W.C. Topley and G.S. Wilson, The Principles of Bacteriology and Immunity (London: Edward Arnold, 1936), 953.

  40. 40.

    Burnet, Keogh, and Lush, ‘The Immunological Reactions of Filterable Viruses’, 284–285.

  41. 41.

    Creager, Life of a Virus, 38–46.

  42. 42.

    Saul Benison, Tom Rivers: Reflections on a Life in Medicine and Science; An Oral History Memoir (Boston: MIT Press, 1967).

  43. 43.

    John Farley, To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  44. 44.

    G.W. Corner, A History of the Rockefeller Institute, 1901–1953: Origins and Growth (New York: Rockefeller Institute Press, 1965), 264–265.

  45. 45.

    D.A.J. Tyrell, ‘Christopher Howard Andrewes’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 37 (1991), 43.

  46. 46.

    Benison, Tom Rivers, 75–76.

  47. 47.

    C.H. Andrewes Personnel File, NIMR, ‘C.H. Andrewes—Recollections’, Interview with E.L. Fraser, Undated (Hereafter, ‘Andrewes—Recollections’). My thanks to former NIMR librarian and archivist, Robert Moore, for this file.

  48. 48.

    See Harriett Chick, Margaret Hume and Marjorie MacFarlane, War on Disease: A History of the Lister Institute (London: A. Deutsch, 1971), 133–134.

  49. 49.

    C.H. Andrewes, ‘The Action of Immune Serum on Vaccinia Virus and Virus III in vitro’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 31 (1928), 671–672.

  50. 50.

    S.P. Bedson, ‘Observations on the Mode of Action of a Viricidal Serum’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, IX (1928), 235–240.

  51. 51.

    C.H. Andrewes, ‘Antivaccinial Serum. 3. Evidence for Slow Union with Virus in vitro’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 33 (1930), 265.

  52. 52.

    C.H. Andrewes, ‘Immunity in Virus Diseases’, Lancet (9 May 1931), 1049.

  53. 53.

    F.J. Fenner and R.V. Blanden, ‘History of Viral Immunology’, in A.L. Notkins (Ed.), Viral Immunology and Immunopathology (New York and London: Academic Press, 1975), 13–14.

  54. 54.

    NA FD1/3356 Influenza, Fletcher to Halley Stewart, 5 January 1933.

  55. 55.

    R.E. Shope, ‘Swine Influenza. III. Filtration Experiments and Etiology’, Journal of Experimental Medicine, 54 (1931), 373–385.

  56. 56.

    W.I.B. Beveridge, Influenza: The Last Great Plague, 4–5.

  57. 57.

    D.A.J. Tyrell, ‘Discovery of Influenza Viruses’, in K.G. Nicholson, R.G. Webster and A.J. Hay (Eds.), Textbook of Influenza (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 19–26.

  58. 58.

    F.M. Burnet, Changing Patterns: An Atypical Autobiography (New York: American Elsevier, 1969), 122–125; F.M. Burnet, ‘A Portrait of Influenza’, Intervirology, 2 (1979), 201–214.

  59. 59.

    D.G. Evans, ‘Wilson Smith, 1897–1965’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 2 (November 1966), 478–487.

  60. 60.

    Robert J. Kirk, ‘Reliable Animals, Responsible Scientists: Constructing Standard Laboratory Animals in Britain c.1919–1976’, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, University College London, 2005, 31–43. For a personal memoir of the NIMR standardization work, see D. Bangham, A History of Biological Standardization—The Characterization and Measurement of Complex Molecules Important in Clinical and Research Medicine. Contributions from the UK 1900–1995. What, Why, How, Where and by Whom. A Personal Account (Bristol: Society for Endocrinology, 1999).

  61. 61.

    Evans, ‘Wilson Smith’, 481; H.H. Dale, ‘Percival Hartley 1881–1957’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 3 (1957), 81–100.

  62. 62.

    Jonathan Liebenau, ‘The MRC and the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Model of Insulin’, in Austoker and Brvder, Historical Perspectives, 163–180; Austoker and Bryder, ‘National Institute of Medical Research’, 53–56.

  63. 63.

    Evans, ‘Wilson Smith’, 481–483.

  64. 64.

    I have reconstructed this work from a number of sources. C.H. Andrewes’ laboratory notebooks for 1933–1934 have been an invaluable. Christopher Herbert Andrewes, Notebooks, Wellcome Library, GC/168/21–24 (hereafter Andrewes Notebook I or II).

  65. 65.

    P.P. Laidlaw, ‘Experimental Influenza’, Guy’s Hospital Gazette, 158 (10, 24 November 1934), 474; ‘Andrewes—Recollections’. For details on the Institute’s research animals, see, R.W. Kirk, ‘Wanted-Standard Guinea Pigs’, 280–291.

  66. 66.

    Andrewes appealed to his old teacher, F.R. Fraser, while Laidlaw appealed to his former colleague, T.H. Layton. C.H. Andrewes, Patrick P. Laidlaw and Wilson Smith, ‘Influenza: Observations on the Recovery of Virus from Man and on the Antibody Content of Human Sera’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, XVI (1935), 569; P.P. Laidlaw, ‘Epidemic Influenza: A Virus Disease’, The Lancet (11 May 1935), 1119–1124.

  67. 67.

    Andrewes—Recollections. The account below is derived from Andrewes’ Recollections, his notebooks, and the team’s first publication, Wilson Smith, C.H. Andrewes, and P.P. Laidlaw, ‘A Virus Obtained from Influenza Patients’, Lancet (8 July 1933), 66–68.

  68. 68.

    Evans, ‘Wilson Smith’, 482.

  69. 69.

    F. Macfarlane Burnet, ‘Reminiscences of Influenza Research 1935–1956’, University of Melbourne Archives.

  70. 70.

    P.P. Laidlaw, ‘Experimental Influenza’, 474; Smith, Andrewes and Laidlaw, ‘A Virus Obtained from Influenza Patients’, 67.

  71. 71.

    A large historical literature has explored the processes and challenges of correlating animal models of human disease. The following have informed my analysis: W.F. Bynum, ‘“C’est un malade”: Animal Models and Concepts of Human Diseases’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 45 (1990), 397–413; I. Löwy and J.-P. Gaudillière, ‘Disciplining Cancer: Mice and the Practice of Genetic Purity’, in I. Löwy and J.-P. Gaudillière (Eds.), The Invisible Industrialist: Manufactures and the Production of Scientific Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1998), 209–249; Christoph Gradmann, ‘Experimental Life and Experimental Disease: The Role of Animal Experiments in Robert Koch’s Medical Bacteriology’, B.I.F. Futura, 18 (2003), 80–88; Anita Guerrini, Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Ilana Lowy, ‘The Experimental Body’, in Roger Cooter and John Pickstone (Eds.), Companion Encyclopedia of Medicine in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2003), 435–449; Karen A. Rader, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900–1955 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); K.A. Rader, ‘Scientific Animals: The Laboratory and Its Human-Animal Relations, from Dba to Dolly’, in Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl (Eds.), A Cultural History of Animals, Volume 6: The Modern Age (1920–2000) (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 119–137.

  72. 72.

    Smith, Andrewes, and Laidlaw, ‘A Virus Obtained from Influenza Patients’, 66. The total number is based on Andrewes’ Laboratory Notebooks.

  73. 73.

    Laidlaw, ‘Experimental Influenza’, 475.

  74. 74.

    Andrewes—Recollections.

  75. 75.

    Volker Hess, ‘Standardizing Body Temperature: Quantification in Hospitals and Daily Life, 1850–1900’, 109–126.

  76. 76.

    Andrewes, Notebook I.

  77. 77.

    Smith, Andrewes, and Laidlaw, ‘A Virus Obtained from Influenza Patients’, 67.

  78. 78.

    Andrewes’ Notebook I.

  79. 79.

    Andrewes—Recollections.

  80. 80.

    P.P. Laidlaw, Virus Diseases and Viruses, The Rede Lecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938).

  81. 81.

    Smith, Andrewes, and Laidlaw, ‘A Virus Obtained from Influenza Patients’, 68; R.E. Shope confirmed the NIMR’s results at the end of the year. R.E. Shope, ‘The Infection of Ferrets with Swine Influenza Virus’, Journal of Experimental Medicine, 60 (1934), 49–61.

  82. 82.

    Laidlaw, ‘Experimental Influenza’, 476.

  83. 83.

    Smith, Andrewes and Laidlaw, ‘A Virus Obtained from Influenza Patients’, 68.

  84. 84.

    Lancet, ‘The Virus of Influenza’ (8 July 1933), 83.

  85. 85.

    BMJ, ‘Aetiology of Influenza’ (15 July 1933), 115.

  86. 86.

    ‘Aetiology of Influenza’, The Practitioner (August 1933), 210.

  87. 87.

    Our Medical Correspondent, ‘Influenza Research’, Times (7 July 1933), 16.

  88. 88.

    ‘DOCTORS’ ‘FLU DISCOVERY’, Daily Mirror (Friday, 7 July 1933), 3.

  89. 89.

    ‘NEW INFLUENZA DISCOVERY—The Primary Cause’, The Manchester Guardian (7 July 1933), 11.

  90. 90.

    ‘Influenza Germ Found at Last’, Daily Express (7 July 1933), 1.

  91. 91.

    T. R. E., ‘Sir Walter Morley Fletcher. 1873–1933’, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1.2 (1933), 153–163.

  92. 92.

    ‘Influenza Virus’, The Daily Telegraph (7 July 1933), 12.

  93. 93.

    ‘Ferrets Assist Doctors in Combatting Influenza’, New York Times (8 July 1933), 5.

  94. 94.

    ‘THE USEFUL FERRET’, The Sphere (15 July 1933), 75.

  95. 95.

    ‘Influenza and the Ferret’, The Manchester Guardian (8 July 1933), 12.

  96. 96.

    ‘How the Virus Was Tracked Down’, Daily Telegraph (7 July 1933), 10.

  97. 97.

    ‘How the Virus Was Tracked Down’, Daily Telegraph (7 July 1933), 7.

  98. 98.

    J. Burnet, ‘What Is Influenza?’, The Medical Times (20 February 1937), 20.

  99. 99.

    See, Rob Boddice, Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). A.W.H. Bates, Anti-Vivisection and the Profession of Medicine in Britain (London: Palgrave, 2017).

  100. 100.

    See, for example, Lawrence, ‘Incommunicable Knowledge’ and Worboys, ‘From Heredity to Infection’.

  101. 101.

    E. Rutherford et al., ‘Ultra-microscopic Viruses Infecting Animals and Plants’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 104 (4 May 1929), 537–560.

  102. 102.

    Eyler notes the importance of Paul de Kruif in popularizing viruses in the United States. Eyler, ‘De Kruif’s Boast’. For popularization more generally, see B. Hansen, Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009). Metheun & Co. approached Mervyn Gordon in 1925 to write a popular book on viruses, which Fletcher counselled against NAFD1/1297, 22 July 1925. The first such book in Britain was by the plant virologist, Kenneth Smith. K.M. Smith, The Virus: Life’s Enemy (Cambridge: University Press, 1940).

  103. 103.

    Rosemary Wall has shown how bacteriology gained authority as a ‘public science’ in Britain in the first decades of the twentieth century. Bacteria in Britain, 1880–1939 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013).

  104. 104.

    Paul J. Weindling, ‘Between Bacteriology and Virology: The Development of Typhus Vaccines Between the First and Second World Wars’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 17 (1995), 81–89; Mazumdar, ‘In the Silence of the Laboratory’.

  105. 105.

    ‘Influenza Germ Found At Last’, Daily Express (7 July 1933), 1.

  106. 106.

    NA MH/55 57 Memorandum on Influenza (Revised Edition), 1927; T.J. Horder, ‘Treatment of Influenza’, Treatment in General Practice (London: H.K. Lewis & Co., 1936), 1–5; J.E. McCartney, ‘Viruses of Common Cold and Herpes’, BMJ (1 August 1925), 10.

  107. 107.

    MH/55 57 MINISTRY OF HEALTH. Memorandum on Influenza—Revised Edition (London: HMSO, 1929).

  108. 108.

    Shope, ‘The Infection of Ferrets with Swine Influenza Virus’, 49–61; T.J. Francis, ‘Transmission of Influenza by a Filterable Virus’, Science, 80 (1934), 457–459.

  109. 109.

    F.M. Burnet, ‘Influenza Virus Isolated from an Australian Epidemic’, Medical Journal of Australia, 2 (1935), 651–653.

  110. 110.

    A.A. Smordinsteff, A.I. Drobyshevskaya, and O.I. Shishkina, ‘On the aetiology of the 1936 influenza epidemic in Leningrad’, Lancet (12 December 1936), 1383–1385.

  111. 111.

    L. Hoyle and R.W. Fairbrother, ‘Isolation of the Influenza Virus and the Relation of Antibodies to Infection and Immunity. The Manchester Influenza Epidemic of 1937’, British Medical Journal (27 March 1937), 655.

  112. 112.

    J. McIntosh and F.R. Selbie, ‘The Pathogenicity to Animals of Viruses Isolated from Cases of Human Influenza’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, XVIII (1937), 334–344.

  113. 113.

    T.J. Francis, ‘Recent Advances in the Study of Influenza’, Journal of the American Medical Association, 105 (1935), 251–254; T.J. Francis, ‘Etiological and Immunological Aspects of Influenza’, Health Examiner, 5 (1936), 589.

  114. 114.

    C.H. Andrewes, P.P. Laidlaw, and Wilson Smith, ‘Influenza: Observations on the Recovery of Virus from Man and on the Antibody Content of Human Sera’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, XVI (1935), 566–582.

  115. 115.

    Löwy, ‘The Experimental Body’, 441; Mazumdar, ‘The Antigen–Antibody Reaction’.

  116. 116.

    P.P. Laidlaw, Wilson Smith, C.H. Andrewes, and G.W. Dunkin, ‘Influenza: The Preparation of Immune Sera in Horses’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, XVI (1935), 277.

  117. 117.

    C.H. Andrewes, Wilson Smith, and P. P. Laidlaw, ‘The Susceptibility of Mice for the Viruses of Human and Swine Influenza’, Lancet (20 October 1934), 859–862; Francis, ‘Transmission of Influenza by a Filterable Virus’. To avoid a priority dispute, the British and American workers agreed to acknowledge each other’s work in their publications.

  118. 118.

    Andrewes, Smith, and Laidlaw, ‘The Susceptibility of Mice for the Viruses’, 859.

  119. 119.

    Stuart-Harris, Andrewes, and Smith, A Study of Epidemic Influenza, 105.

  120. 120.

    Laidlaw, Smith, Andrewes, and Dunkin, ‘Influenza: The preparation of immune sera in horses’, 278–279.

  121. 121.

    Andrewes, Smith, and Laidlaw, ‘The Susceptibility of Mice for the Viruses’, 862.

  122. 122.

    ‘The Mouse and Influenza Virus’, BMJ (3 November 1934), 817.

  123. 123.

    See Nelly Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaelogy of Sex Hormones (London: Routledge, 1994), 66.

  124. 124.

    The LCC took control of former Metropolitan Asylum Board hospitals on 1 April 1930 as part of the abolition of the Poor Law Guardians. See G.M. Ayers, England’s First State Hospitals and the Metropolitan Asylums Board (London: Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1971).

  125. 125.

    For official accounts, see Medical Research Council Annual Reports, 1934–1939.

  126. 126.

    NIMR Personnel Files, C.H. Andrewes, Report on Year’s Work, 1934–35.

  127. 127.

    NIMR Personnel Files, C.H. Andrewes, Report on Year’s Work, 1934–35.

  128. 128.

    James S. Porterfield, ‘Sir Charles Herbert Stuart-Harris (1909–1996), Virologist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Accessed 23 September 2019. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-61938; David Tyrrell, ‘Sir Charles Herbert Stuart-Harris’, BMJ 314 (1997), 906-7.

  129. 129.

    Andrewes, Laidlaw, and Smith, ‘Influenza: Observations on the Recovery of Virus from Man’.

  130. 130.

    Andrewes, Laidlaw and Smith, ‘Influenza: Observations on the Recovery of Virus from Man’, 577.

  131. 131.

    Andrewes, Laidlaw, and Smith, ‘Influenza: Observations on the Recovery of Virus from Man’, 576.

  132. 132.

    R.E. Shope, ‘The Influenzas of Swine and Man’, The Harvey Lectures, 1935–1936 (New York: The Harvey Society, 1936), 183–213; R.E. Shope, ‘Old, Intermediate and Contemporay Contributions to Our Knowledge of Pandemic Influenza’, Medicine, 23 (1944), 415–420.

  133. 133.

    C.H. Andrewes, ‘Influenza: Four Years’ Progress’, British Medical Journal (11 September 1937), 513–514.

  134. 134.

    NA FD1/1114, ‘A Study of Epidemic Influenza’, 1938.

  135. 135.

    C.H. Stuart-Harris, C.H. Andrewes, and Wilson Smith, A Study of Epidemic Influenza: With Special Reference to the 1936–7 Epidemic, Medical Research Council, Special Report Series, No. 228 (London: HMSO, 1938), 3.

  136. 136.

    NIMR Personnel Files. Laidlaw, ‘Memorandum on Need for More Clinical Cooperation in Influenza Work’, 1935.

  137. 137.

    Laidlaw, Smith, Andrewes to Dale Report on Influenza Research Carried out in the Year 1933–4. MRC Annual Report, 1934.

  138. 138.

    Andrewes, Laidlaw, and Smith, ‘Influenza: Observations on the Recovery of Virus from Man and on the Antibody Content of Human Sera’, British Journal of Experimental Pathology, 16.4 (1935), 580–581.

  139. 139.

    The first studies had been carried out by French researchers, C. Nicolle and C. Lebailly, ‘Quelques notions experimentales sur le virus de la grippe’, Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences Paris, 167 (1918), 607–610; and R. Dujarric de la Riviere, ‘La grippe est-elle une maladie a virus filtrant?’, Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences. Paris, 167 (1918), 606–607.

  140. 140.

    Laidlaw, ‘Epidemic Influenza: A Virus Disease’, 1119.

  141. 141.

    Wilson Smith and C.H. Stuart-Harris, ‘Influenza Infection of Man from the Ferret’, Lancet (18 July 1936), 121–123.

  142. 142.

    Wilson Smith and C.H. Stuart-Harris, ‘Influenza Infection of Man from the Ferret’, 121–123.

  143. 143.

    Wilson Smith and C.H. Stuart-Harris, ‘Influenza Infection of Man from the Ferret’, 123.

  144. 144.

    Wilson Smith and C.H. Stuart-Harris, ‘Influenza Infection of Man from the Ferret’, 123.

  145. 145.

    Stuart-Harris, Andrewes and Smith, A Study of Epidemic Influenza: With Special Reference to the 1936–7 Epidemic, 3.

  146. 146.

    Stuart-Harris, Andrewes and Smith, A Study of Epidemic Influenza: With Special Reference to the 1936–7 Epidemic, 56.

  147. 147.

    W. Osler, H.A. Christian, and T. McRae, ‘Influenza’, In The Principles and Practices of Medicine, 12th edition (London: D. Appleton and Co., 1935), 110.

  148. 148.

    A.H. Douthwaite, ‘Influenza’, in H. Rolleston (Ed.), The British Medical Encyclopaedia of Medical Practice (London: Butterworh & Co., 1937), 174–190, p. 180.

  149. 149.

    J.G. Scadding, ‘Clinical Aspects of Influenza’, The Practitioner, CXLI (December 1938), 712–724, @ p. 712.

  150. 150.

    Ministry of Health, Memorandum on Influenza Revised Edition (London: HMSO, 1939).

  151. 151.

    ‘The Virus of Influenza’, The Practitioner (August 1933), 210.

  152. 152.

    Osler, Christian, and McRae, ‘Influenza’, in The Principles and Practices of Medicine, 12th edition, 110.

  153. 153.

    Wilson Smith and C.H. Stuart-Harris, ‘Influenza Infection of Man from the Ferret’, Lancet (18 July 1936), 121–123.

  154. 154.

    ‘The Influenza Epidemic’, Times (9 January 1937), 13.

  155. 155.

    ‘Lord Horder on the Influenza “Plague”’, Times (27 February 1937), 14.

  156. 156.

    J. Torrens, ‘Influenza: Its Sequelae and Treatment’, BMJ (17 February 1934), 274–276.

  157. 157.

    D. Thomson and R. Thomson, ‘Some Features of the Influenzal Epidemic in the Spring of 1935’, BMJ (13 July 1935), 62–63, p. 62.

  158. 158.

    ‘Influenza and Its Cause’, Times (17 March 1937), 11.

  159. 159.

    J.E.R. McDonagh, The Common Cold and Influenza, and Their Relationship to Other Infections in Man and Animals (London: William Heinemann, 1936).

  160. 160.

    W.M. Crofton, The True Nature of Viruses (London: John Bale, Sons & Curnow, 1936), x.

  161. 161.

    ‘The Causes of Influenza’, BMJ (27 April 1940), 649.

  162. 162.

    G.E. Beaumont, Medicine: Essentials for Practitioners and Students (London: J&A. Churchill, 1942), 528.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Heritage and Classics, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Michael Bresalier

Authors
  1. Michael Bresalier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Bresalier .

Copyright information

© 2023 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bresalier, M. (2023). Viralising Flu: Towards a New Medical Consensus. In: Modern Flu. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33954-6_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33954-6_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-33953-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33954-6

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation