Death grippe: The other great war in 1918 — against influenza — killed millions globally and thousands locally

Soldiers convalesce from the so-called “Spanish flu” in September 1918 in an overflow ward of the hospital at Eberts Field in Lonoke.
Soldiers convalesce from the so-called “Spanish flu” in September 1918 in an overflow ward of the hospital at Eberts Field in Lonoke.

If it really is better to laugh than to cry, the pun in this rope-jumping ditty that circulated in Arkansas and elsewhere during the 1918-'19 influenza pandemic may induce a chuckle rather than a groan:

I had a little bird,

Its name was Enza,

I opened the window

And in-flu-Enza

In fact, there was nothing remotely funny about the flu pandemic, estimated to have killed 50 million to 100 million people around the world, including some 700,000 Americans. No other affliction, even the dreaded bubonic plague of the late Middle Ages, is known to have caused so many deaths globally.

The flu's effects in Arkansas are reflected by this comparison: In 1918, about 600 Arkansans were killed in combat as World War I finally ended in Europe. During that year's final months and on into 1919, at least 7,000 Arkansans died of the viral disease.

The state's fatality total may have been considerably higher. In isolated rural areas, whole families succumbed with nobody left alive to mourn or report the deaths. And black victims often went uncounted by public health authorities in the Jim Crow era.

An epicenter of the flu in Arkansas was Camp Pike, the quickly built Army training center near North Little Rock that housed as many as 52,000 troops in 1918, nearly Little Rock's population of 58,000. The base was a tinderbox for contagious diseases, given the crowding of troops into close-quarters barracks, particularly after a quarantine was declared.

According to Kim Allen Scott's 1988 article "Plague on the Home Front," in Arkansas Historical Quarterly, the flu outbreak meant that "a soldier stationed at Camp Pike had been statistically in greater danger of dying than his counterpart in the trenches of France."

The first acknowledged flu case at Camp Pike was admitted to the base hospital Sept. 23, 1918. By then, wrote Scott, more than 20,000 soldiers at camps across the United States had contracted influenza, "and with so many transfers of personnel from camp to camp, a serious outbreak in Arkansas was unavoidable."

By the end of September, 7,600 Camp Pike flu patients were overtaxing the base's medical resources. To make matters worse, 62 of the camp's 240 medical personnel soon came down with the disease, which killed mainly by flooding patients' lungs with fluids, essentially drowning them. Its mortality rate was only 3 percent or so, but its virulently contagious spread still produced widespread deaths.

Camp Pike's "young patients died in droves, gasping for breath," reported Nancy Hendricks in the 2015 anthology To Can the Kaiser: Arkansas and the Great War, published by Butler Center Books. She noted that this strain, known as the Spanish flu, was unusual in that a prime target was healthy young men rather than children and the elderly.

Hendricks, a playwright and author of several books, wrote that "fearing panic as well as not wanting to appear unpatriotic in wartime, the commandant ordered that neither the extent of the epidemic nor the names of the dead be released to the press."

Camp Pike was closed to visitors at the end of September, with soldiers confined to their barracks. That was "a sure way of spreading the disease to any comrades who had somehow remained healthy," Hendricks observes. The same situation prevailed at Eberts Field, an Army Air Service training center in Lonoke County.

Camp Pike fatalities rose for a while to such a level that the federal government dispatched nine extra undertakers to help embalm the corpses. A medical student in Little Rock later remembered seeing a stack of coffins piled atop a railroad car headed for the camp.

At the same time, the base's morale officer, Lt. T.C. Defries, aimed to boost spirits by providing music to the camp from two bands he had commissioned: Kill the Flu Quartet and Flu Chaser Jazz Band. Defries later died, of either pneumonia or the flu.

STAY CALM

By the end of September, influenza was spreading to the state's civilians. Newspapers, including the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat, tended to downplay the seriousness of the situation.

A Gazette story Sept. 20 quoted Dr. J.C. Geiger, U.S. Public Health Service officer for Arkansas, as calling the menacing illness "simple, plain, old-fashioned la grippe" -- a particularly bad chest cold. Cases also were often diagnosed as pneumonia instead.

Oct. 1, after quarantining whole families at Carlisle and confirming 60 cases in one day at Little Rock, Geiger acknowledged that the flu was worse than the usual grippe. But, he said, the situation in Little Rock was "not especially serious."

On Oct. 2, with 67 additional cases at Little Rock, the Gazette quoted him as saying it would be a great help if people with symptoms would confine themselves to their homes.

On Oct. 4, with 506 cases in Little Rock, the headline from Geiger was "Situation still well in hand." On Oct. 6 he downplayed the need for a statewide quarantine. Two days later, such a quarantine was imposed.

According to Hendricks, Geiger "may have been following directives from the national office to maintain a morale-boosting strategy. This was possibly to avert a panic -- a real threat, with rumors across America that the disease was caused by German infiltrators."

By Oct. 13, Geiger was very sick and staying home from work. He recovered, but his 32-year-old wife died Oct. 21 (see Old News on Page 1D).

Scott's 1988 article reported that Little Rock counted 9,813 cases of flu in October alone, amounting to nearly one of every six residents. At Camp Pike, the combined September-October totals were 15,002 diagnosed cases.

This meant "that nearly one out of every four people reported sick during September and October in central Arkansas. Every man, woman and child must have either had influenza themselves or at least knew someone who did."

As conditions worsened in Little Rock and elsewhere, according to Scott, "the quarantine regulations forced not only the closing of schools, churches, theaters and lodges, but also shortened the operating hours of retail shops and prohibited bargain sales to discourage crowds.

"At first the quarantine seemed no more than a minor inconvenience to many citizens. After noting the absence of any parties or receptions to cover, an exasperated society columnist at the Arkansas Gazette complained that the sole remaining amusements for the gentry class consisted of reading and playing solitaire."

Quarantine rules in the state were gradually lifted from late October on, although influenza cases and resulting deaths in Arkansas continued through 1919.

HOME REMEDIES

There were no effective treatments to provide immunity, although some doctors in the state did experiment with a serum believed to produce partial protection. According to Scott, "it was practically useless."

Geiger coined the slogan: "Cover up each cough and sneeze. If you don't, you'll spread disease." Otherwise, wrote Smith, "physicians had few weapons in their arsenal with which to treat influenza patients."

This made quarantine vital in abating the flu's spread. Efforts to enforce the isolation varied. By Smith's account, "some local boards were quite stringent, such as Little Rock's, which engaged the services of volunteers to patrol the streets and report violators of the anti-spitting ordinance."

Home remedies were much in play, as Hendricks reported: "Arkansas country folks sometimes relied on carrying talismans or hanging Asafoetida bags around the neck." Asafoetida is a plant extract with a strong offensive odor, which bore the common names "stinking gum" and "devil's dung." It actually may have produced small amounts of natural antiviral compounds.

Patent medicines also came into vogue, as described by Scott: "Patent medicine advertisers pulled out all the stops during this golden opportunity for profits." The makers of Laxative Bromo-Quinine tablets "advised larger doses of their product because 'Spanish influenza is an exaggerated form of grip ... a good plan is not to wait until you're sick.'"

In a state even more God-fearing a century ago than it is today, it was perhaps inevitable that a religious message would be spun from the epidemic even as its impact diminished during 1919.

One such inspiration from that year, quoted by Scott, produced a lyric titled "Influenza" from W.H. Mitchell of Fort Smith:

It was God's mighty hand,

He is judging this old land,

North and south, east and west, can be seen;

Yes, He's killed the rich and poor,

And he's going to kill some more,

If you don't turn away from your shame.

photo

The Jan. 30, 1919, Arkansas Democrat reported that Dr. J.C. Geiger had notified merchants that if they saw anyone spitting in public they were to call the police at once.

ActiveStyle on 09/24/2018

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