Although the influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people in the last year of World War I than the war itself-an estimated 40 million worldwide, altogether (Adams), Americans have not retained this incident their collective memory because they tend to think of it as a relic from a bygone era that no longer affects them in the age of modern medicine. They believe that they can take a pill or get a shot that will arrest the virus's action in their body, not realizing that there is no pill or shot that is universally effective against viruses. Antibiotics are only effective against bacteria, but many Americans do not understand those limitations and request antibiotics for viral infections. Believing that all they need to do in the event of a pandemic is to visit their doctor and get medication, they do not worry about influenza epidemics of the past, because they think the deaths from those were the result of not having the proper medications available. Moreover, they do not think about the potential impact if they get sick.
The impact of the influenza epidemic on those who lived through it must have been very great. The necessity of caring for massive numbers of sick and the inability to keep businesses going for lack of personnel would have made the experience as cataclysmic as a natural disaster like earthquake or tornado. In addition, the fear of possibly getting sick would have been traumatic, and the grief of losing loved ones would have been devastating. The most constructive response we can have toward such losses is to study the epidemic and learn what we can from it.
The most important things we can learn from a study of the epidemic are what worked, what did not work, and how we can appropriate the lessons learned to our experience today. One thing we know did not work was vaccination. According to Dr. Eleanor McBean, who was an eyewitness of the 1918 epidemic, "...the flu hit only the vac...