Why You Wouldn't Have Wanted the Flu in 1918 

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How we got from bloodletting to blood transfusions and beyond. Up next, the story of the flu. You've had it. I've had it.

We've all had it. But how did we go from influenza being a potential death sentence we knew nothing about to a day or two on the sofa? Here to tell that story is ER doctor, Dr. Jeremy Brown. Dr. Brown is also the author of Influenza, a 100-year hunt to cure the deadliest disease in history. We'd like to thank the US National Archives for allowing us to access this audio from Dr. Brown's lecture in 2019.

Let's get into the story. More people were killed in the influenza virus than in the wars. 50 to 100 million people worldwide. Here in the United States, 675,000 deaths, civilian deaths. And of the 116,000 combat casualties killed in World War I, over half actually died from disease. The majority of that was influenza. It's a sobering thought to think that if you take those statistics and multiply them out by the current population of the United States, those 675,000 deaths would turn out to be about 3 million deaths in today's numbers. The 1918 great flu epidemic caused such a large loss of life that it dropped the average life expectancy in the US by 12 years. 12 years, 120 times greater than what we have seen with the current opioid crisis.

So put that into perspective and think what that would be like to live through such a thing. So this is the Washington Post from Saturday, September 14th, 1918. It's not the front page. And it tells us that the Spanish influenza was spreading across the US. It wasn't really reported yet in the papers in large numbers. But it had begun to spread across the US. Now, the following day, the Washington Post reported that 90 people had died of influenza in Boston and that the malady seemed to have been sweeping from east to west. It wasn't actually.

It was actually probably started somewhere in the Midwest. But the malady was already sort of ramping up. And the very next day they reported that 90 people in Boston had died. These were deaths among soldiers and sailors. The plague builds momentum.

More and more people die. And by October 2nd, on the front page of the Washington Post, we were told that the work hours have changed. That the federal day has been staggered to check the influenza spread.

The idea was that if we could stop people from mingling, although we didn't know that it was a virus that was causing this, we did understand somehow that keeping away from people was probably a good idea. So theaters were closed down in some places. Restaurants either closed or staggered.

Stores had staggered hours. By October 13th, 1918, the Washington Post reported that the price of coffins had skyrocketed and that this was an example of people taking advantage of a terrible situation. In fact, they write the coffin trust is holding the people of this city of Washington, holding the people of this city by the throat and extorting from them outrageous prices for coffins and disposal of the dead. By December 8th, 1918, the Washington Post had thought that we were coming to an end and it put this little snippet that said that Spanish influenza is more deadly than war. And that is indeed the case.

We know that. The treatments were not terribly effective. They included mercury, tree bark, inhaling factory gases.

Yes, that actually happened. People were reported in the south of England to be taking their families and their children to local gas works, actually munition factories where the toxic fumes were thought to somehow reduce the likelihood of getting influenza. Actually this turns out not to be as crazy as it sounds because many of these gas works actually contained chlorine. Chlorine gas was used during the war. And we know that chlorine is a great antiseptic.

It kills everything, including people. So very likely the chlorine in fact and some work that was done showed that factory workers in these places had influenza at slightly lower rates than other people probably because, yes, they were inhaling little bits of chlorine and the whole atmosphere was bathed in the chlorine gas and that probably reduced the amount of free virus floating around. So it wasn't a completely crazy thing to take your children to inhale factory gases. There were some upsides of treatment back then.

Whiskey was extremely popular as was champagne. Enemas were used. Enemas actually were used to treat everything back then.

There was really very little you could do. So an enema was thought to clean everything out. So enemas were quite popular. And one of the most remarkable things is bloodletting. Now bloodletting is the process by which blood is removed from the body and the thought is that with that removal of the blood you are taking out the bad humor, the bad thing that is in the blood causing the disease.

It dates back to at least the 5th century B.C. and George Washington was probably killed by bloodletting as he lay dying from a throat infection. His senior doctors suggested that we let blood. Now the junior people were less into this idea and there was a little bit of resistance from them but as usual the senior people won and blood was taken from George Washington as he lay dying on his bed and he passed out or entered a swoon and it was called then and within a few hours he was dead. The doctors then tried to think about reanimating George Washington by using and I'm not making this up sheep's blood.

At that time though fortunately good sense prevailed and they decided enough is enough with the bloodletting and the sheep's blood and they let him rest in peace. But what is remarkable to me is that bloodletting was used in the great flu epidemic of 1918 and not just by what we might call quacks today but this was prescribed by mainstream physicians. There's a report in the Lancet one of the leading medical journals in the world one of the leading medical journals in the United Kingdom and if you think about it the name the Lancet is named after the device the little hollow tube that you would take blood from so leading medical journal today is called the Lancet to remind us of bloodletting and the report mentions that in 1916 that's two years before this great flu pandemic there was another pandemic another epidemic excuse me in some of the military camps in Great Britain and the doctors had tried everything including they said including bloodletting.

So it was 1916 now this is the lifetime of my own grandfather. In 1916 physicians were trying bloodletting on these poor patients and of course it didn't work but the physician said it didn't work but we think that it didn't work because we tried it too late and had we tried bloodletting a little bit sooner in the clinical care of these soldiers that maybe it worked and then there were reports in 1918 the height of the epidemic of bloodletting and in fact the reports were that yes sometimes bloodletting works for influenza. So you can see if it wasn't the enemas that got you the bloodletting might get you and it was really a quite a nasty array of medicines that we had to try and treat this. Everyone was prescribed enemas and one of my favorite discoveries was from a published paper from I think the grand the grandchildren of a patient who had influenza not in 1918 but in 1936 almost two decades after the great influenza pandemic the family had preserved the nursing records of grandfather found them in the attic and actually published them.

I'm going to read a little bit a passage that describes what this person went through. So over a period of three weeks he was treated with a punishing battery of balms mustard plaster a home remedy rubbed on the skin aspirin for fevers codeine for cough phenolphthalein a cancer-causing laxative cough medicine camphorated oil seven enemas seven rectal tubes don't ask milk of magnesia another laxative god help him urotropine a bladder antiseptic and tincture of benzoine. These were all administered to this patient in 1936 and actually in the paper that was published you can see the arrows along the timeline where all these various things were given.

The patient received at least five prescribed doses of whiskey so there is at least that and 14 doses of castor oil. Actually his seven enemas may have been medically necessary because he was given at least 39 doses of codeine which suppresses coughing but also causes constipation. So that's what life was like when you had influenza a hundred years ago or so.

And if you're cringing we're cringing listening enemas bloodletting was just what you did when we come back the influenza of 1918 the great flu. The story continues here on Our American Stories. Today's podcast is brought to you by Ferguson Home. Whether you're a homeowner working on a remodel or a pro managing multiple projects Ferguson Home is where great ideas become stunning spaces. My wife and I know firsthand because Ferguson Home was by our side when we built our beautiful house. All of our indoor and outdoor kitchen appliances most of our kitchen and bathroom hardware came from Ferguson Home. They have the best selection of kitchen bath and lighting products all of which you can find online or you can visit a local Ferguson Home showroom like we did and get one-on-one support from their amazing consultants who are there for us with their expert advice and support. They'll be there for you too.

Go to FergusonHome.com to shop the latest styles from top brands like Kohler or find a showroom location near you. Hi it's Jenny Garth. We all know the importance of taking care of our physical and mental health but what about our sexual health? I've been there feeling totally stuck when it comes to my libido. That's why I started taking Addi and let me tell you I've seen firsthand what a difference it can make in how you feel. Addi is the only FDA approved pill clinically proven to help certain pre-menopausal women have more interest in sex, have more satisfying sex, and lower the stress from low libido. Addi has helped hundreds of thousands of women get their drive back including me. Talk to your doctor or visit ADDY.com to learn more about Addi, the little pink pill.

Individual results may vary. Addi or flibanserin is for pre-menopausal women with acquired generalized hypoactive sexual desire disorder, HSDD, who have not had problems with low sexual desire in the past, who have had low sexual desire no matter the type of sexual activity, the situation, or the sexual partner. This low sexual desire is troubling to them and is not due to a medical or mental health problem, problems in the relationship, or medicine, or other drug use. Addi is not for use in children, men, or to enhance sexual performance. Your risk of severe low blood pressure and fainting is increased if you drink one to two standard alcoholic drinks close in time to your Addi dose. Wait at least two hours after drinking before taking Addi at bedtime. This risk increases if you take certain prescriptions, OTC, or herbal medications, or have liver problems, and can happen when you take Addi without alcohol or other medicines. Do not take if you're allergic to any of Addi's ingredients. Allergic reaction may include hives, itching, or trouble breathing. Sometimes serious sleepiness can occur.

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And I'm Leah, and we're from the Grown Up Stuff podcast. And just in time for tax season, on this week's episode, we're chatting with CPA Lisa Green-Lewis about how small businesses can tackle their taxes using TurboTax Business. A Forbes study mentioned that a whopping 93% of small businesses overpay their taxes, and 17% of Gen Z-ers believed that you could write off any expense as a business expense. So... Can't blame them. It's really important to do your taxes right.

Listen to Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And we return to Our American Stories and with Dr. Jeremy Brown's lecture at the US National Archives back in 2019 about influenza, the flu. In 1918, we knew nothing about the flu, what caused it, or how to cure it, or how to effectively alleviate the disease at all. Countless died, 675,000 in America alone, the equivalent of 3 million today. Let's pick up where we last left off. What about today?

How do we do today? Well, for the vast majority of us, the vast majority of us, influenza is a little bit of an inconvenience. It's not life-threatening, and it's something that we generally deal with at home. Our friends or our family come around, give us some hot soup.

We have a couple of days in bed, and usually that's it. But of course, some of us end up in the emergency department. And over my time as an emergency physician, I got to treat many, many, possibly hundreds, who knows, maybe thousands of patients with influenza over the many years.

And there we have things that we didn't have 100 years ago, right? We have an emergency department, blood tests that can tell us what's happening, x-rays so that we can actually get a real good look at the lungs and see if there's any evidence of secondary pneumonia or even primary pneumonia. We can get people intravenous fluids. And of course, we have antibiotics today. Now let's be very clear, antibiotics should not be given to patients with influenza.

They do not work. We all know this, even though they're prescribed unnecessarily often, even today. They don't work, but they do work to help treat the secondary infections, the pneumonias, the bacterial pneumonias that come as a result of the primary viral influenza. And we have those antibiotics today. It's a remarkable thing that today we believe that the majority of deaths that occurred in the great flu epidemic were caused by secondary pneumonias that we would be able to treat today.

So that's good news. Enemas, bloodletting, whiskey, 100 years ago today, the emergency department will stay at home. And of course, connected to the emergency department is the intensive care unit. I mean, that's the miracle of modern medicine today that clearly was not around 100 years ago.

So the treatment. Let's now think about the cause of influenza. What do we know about the cause today and what did they know 100 years ago? So I think in many respects, this is the most frightening aspect of the great influenza pandemic that they just didn't know what it was caused by.

Now, there were some suggestions. Among those suggestions included the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. In fact, the conjunction of the planets. In fact, that's where we get the name influenza from.

It's from the Italian influentia, meaning influence. And the earliest thoughts were in the 1500s, 1600s, were that this disease, and it was an entity that you could identify, this disease was caused by something up in the stars. So there was this theory going around and we still have this buried in our history when we refer to influenza today.

So perhaps conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, rotting animal carcasses were thought to be one possible explanation. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, effluvia of that word, effluvia discharged into the air from the bowels of the earth. People really didn't know what it was. In fact, at a meeting that occurred in Chicago public health officials early in the influenza epidemic of 1918, one public health official said the following, we may as well admit it and call it germ X. We have no idea, said the leading public health officials.

We don't know what causes it and where we are. Now, an example of a cause that was really not a cause was a discovery in 1892 in Berlin by some microbiologist. And they found a bacterium on the lung samples of people who had died from the flu. And they said, aha, this must be the cause of the flu because it's everywhere, right? And they called this bacterium, they call it Bacillus influenza, the influenza bacillus.

The problem was that it was not the cause of the disease. It was a secondary pathogen that was found. It was a secondary bacteria. And that thought that they found the bacteria and it turned out not to be correct. That happened in several different instances in the history of flu.

The bacillus was later changed its name. It was called not bacillus influenza, but haemophilus influenza. And some of you may have heard of haemophilus influenza.

It's a nasty bug. But for many years, I had no idea as a physician, why am I looking or treating this person with what we call H flu? This has nothing to do with the flu. Well, it turns out that 100 years ago, it was thought to have been the cause of the flu and it was inappropriately named. One of the historians, Alfred Crosby, one of the historians of the great flu called this discovery of bacillus influenza an authoritative sign pointing in the wrong direction. So, yeah, that was bacillus influenza, secondary pathogen. Now, in 1889, there had been a small epidemic, but still a severe one in Great Britain. And it was so severe that actually parliament commissioned a report on the epidemic. And this was reported in 1889 by Henry Parsons. Henry Parsons, and he was a very, very smart person.

And we'll see why. Anyway, he spoke about various theories that may have caused this 1889 epidemic. One of the theories at the time, and I'm not making this up, was tainted Russian oats. The suggestion was that the Russians were bringing their disease from the east through Europe in these tainted Russian oats. Now, every society actually blamed the outsider for this. But it strikes me as kind of weird that today, when we're still blaming the Russians for pretty much everything, back in the great flu epidemic and earlier, perhaps the Russians were behind it as well.

But Parsons, as I said, was smarter than that. And he dug a little deeper. So he suggested, he said, well, it could be the weather. Perhaps there's something floating around in the air.

And that is, of course, partially true. There is something in the air, although it's person-to-person contact more. And he suggested that maybe it's a non-living particulate matter, which is actually a remarkably accurate description, isn't it, of what a virus turned out to be, a non-living particulate matter. So it was a little prescient there in describing the possible cause of the flu. So it could be Russian tainted oats.

It could be a poison in midair. Then he suggested, well, what if it's a person-to-person contact? It's not spread by oats or volcanoes or stuff in the air, but one person gives it to another. And here, I think, Henry Parsons really showed the right way for us to think about things. He said, let's get some data if it's person-to-person contact. So what he did was he looked at the illness rates on the British railway system, and he compared the rates of the engineers who were feeding the steam engines and the coal, who worked outside but far away from people, and he compared those influenza rates, how many people reported sick from that group of workers. He compared those to the rates of influenza among the clerks inside who were selling the tickets.

And, of course, they are inside, so they're not exposed to the outside, but they're in constant contact with people. And he simply compared the two, and he found that, of course, it was the clerks who had an increased rate of influenza illness because they were in contact with people, and the railway engineers driving the train, standing outside, feeding the coal into that big steam engine, their rates of flu were really much lower than the clerks, even though they were outside exposed to the effluvia and who knows what from volcanoes. And from here, he suggested that really, it's really probably nothing to do with the atmosphere, but it's more to do with person-to-person contact. So from a simple look at some records, this guy Parsons figured out that probably we're onto something in the person-to-person sphere.

And then he said the following. He also suggested that perhaps animals have something to do with it, and here he was really on the money. He suggested that perhaps birds or horses or dogs had something to do with the spread, and he goes into this in some detail in his report. And, of course, we know today that birds are intimately related to the spread of influenza and new strains. So back in 1889, Henry Parsons, I think, was really onto something when he discussed the possibility that birds were involved.

A man ahead of his time, Henry Parsons, when we come back, more of the story of the influenza, the flu, here on Our American Stories. Today's podcast is brought to you by Ferguson Home. Whether you're a homeowner working on a remodel or a pro managing multiple projects, Ferguson Home is where great ideas become stunning spaces. My wife and I know firsthand because Ferguson Home was by our side when we built our beautiful house. All of our indoor and outdoor kitchen appliances, most of our kitchen and bathroom hardware came from Ferguson Home. They have the best selection of kitchen, bath, and lighting products, all of which you can find online, or you can visit a local Ferguson Home showroom, like we did, and get one-on-one support from their amazing consultants who were there for us with their expert advice and support. They'll be there for you, too.

Go to FergusonHome.com to shop the latest styles from top brands like Kohler, or find a showroom location near you. Hi, it's Jenny Garth. We all know the importance of taking care of our physical and mental health. But what about our sexual health? I've been there, feeling totally stuck when it comes to my libido. That's why I started taking Addi.

And let me tell you, I've seen firsthand what a difference it can make in how you feel. Addi is the only FDA-approved pill clinically proven to help certain premenopausal women have more interest in sex, have more satisfying sex, and lower the stress from low libido. Addi has helped hundreds of thousands of women get their drive back, including me. Talk to your doctor or visit ADDYI.com to learn more about Addi, the little pink pill individual results may vary. Addi, or flibanserin, is for premenopausal women with acquired generalized hypoactive sexual desire disorder, HSDD, who have not had problems with low sexual desire in the past, who have had low sexual desire no matter the type of sexual activity, the situation, or the sexual partner.

This low sexual desire is troubling to them and is not due to a medical or mental health problem, problems in the relationship, or medicine, or other drug use. Addi is not for use in children, men, or to enhance sexual performance. Your risk of severe low blood pressure and fainting is increased if you drink one to two standard alcoholic drinks close in time to your Addi dose. Wait at least two hours after drinking before taking Addi at bedtime. This risk increases if you take certain prescriptions, OTC, or herbal medications, or have liver problems, and can happen when you take Addi without alcohol or other medicines. Do not take if you're allergic to any of Addi's ingredients. Allergic reaction may include hives, itching, or trouble breathing. Sometimes serious sleepiness can occur.

Common side effects include dizziness, nausea, tiredness, difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, and dry mouth. See full PI and medication guide, including boxed warning, at Addi.com slash PI. Addi.

Visit ADDYI.com to learn more about Addi. Hi, I'm Matt. And I'm Leah, and we're from the Grown Up Stuff podcast. And just in time for tax season. On this week's episode, we're chatting with CPA Lisa Green Lewis about how small businesses can tackle their taxes using TurboTax business. A Forbes study mentioned that a whopping 93% of small businesses overpay their taxes. And 17% of Gen Z'ers believed that you could write off any expense as a business expense. So it's really important to do your taxes right.

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Or go to lifelock.com slash IHART for 40% off. Terms apply. And we return to Our American Stories and the final portion of our story featuring Dr. Jeremy Brown from a lecture at the US National Archives back in 2019 about influenza or the flu. Let's pick up where we last left off. Now today, of course, we know what causes influenza.

There is no doubt. It's a viral particle, many, many times smaller than a bacterium. We're able to take photo-micrographs of this when the electron microscope was developed and able to be used around 1839. In fact, scientists today know that the genetic code of the influenza virus, how its eight viral genes work together, what its viral coat looks like, the proteins on that viral coat, what those proteins do and how they make us sick. And so the degree of advances, I think, from this suggestion that it's something in oats to something that we can see and identify and know a lot about is really, I think, a remarkable example of the progression of science. Now we can identify the viral particle down to its genetic makeup, its genetic construction. So in that respect, I think we've come a long way in understanding the cause, the cause of the disease, which brings us to the last part now, which is the way that we've changed in terms of prevention. So there were attempts to produce early vaccines to influenza. Now Louis Pasteur back in the 1880s had, of course, developed his own set of vaccines, most famously to rabies. And that doesn't necessarily mean that he knew what the virus was, but he had a suggestion that it was something that was in the nervous tissue and he managed to propagate nervous tissue and take samples and make them weaker and weaker and weaker until he figured out that what he had now was a weakened thing, he called a virus, and that's how he produced his rabies vaccine. So we know that people were producing vaccines back then. But, of course, what they were using were bacteria that were secondary pathogens and not the primary pathogen which was influenza. So, for instance, in early 1919, Edward Rosenow from the Mayo Clinic isolated five different kinds of bacteria from patients and he mixed them all together and he managed to inoculate over 100,000 people with his vaccine.

We're not sure what the clinical outcomes were, the records aren't great, but he certainly tried. Now in Boston, at the Tufts Medical College, Dr. Timothy Leary made a vaccine. Now, he made a blended vaccine using the strains from the Chelsea Hospital, Chelsea Naval Hospital, a nurse's nose from the Kearney Hospital, and the infected wards of Camp Devens not far from Boston. And he made a concoction and gave them to people and actually his vaccine ended up being sent to San Francisco where 18,000 people were inoculated with his vaccine. So that's Dr. Timothy Leary. And in case you're wondering, yes, the answer is it is the same Dr. Timothy Leary.

In fact, this is the uncle of the famous Dr. Timothy Leary in Boston, he who wanted us to turn on, tune in, and drop out. It's his uncle who created this, attempted a vaccine 100 years ago. So that's attempts at vaccines back then. What do we do today?

What do we have today? Well, we do have vaccines against the flu, but it's really not a very good vaccine. I mean, if you think about it, right, mumps, measles, rubella, polio, you get them once or twice as a kid and you're done, right?

You're done, you're finished, that's it, you're good to go. You won't get the disease ever. But in terms of flu, we're told that we need to get it every year, a new flu shot.

I just had it last year and the year before. We're dealing with a vaccine that is really not on the same level of effectiveness as these others. In fact, in a good year, in a good year, with the wind blowing in the right direction, the flu vaccine is about 50 to 60% effective at best, at best.

So why is this, right? Why is this flu vaccine so hard to create? And the answer is that we have this hollow ball that contains the eight genes of the flu virus and it makes these proteins on the surface and it's against those proteins that the vaccine is created. The problem is that flu is such a good disguiser, a master of disguise, that it changes the makeup of those surface proteins very, very quickly. And it mutates from one kind to another so that when we think we've got, we figured out what kind of flu is going to be around with species A, well, it turns out that species A then sort of mutates and the vaccine is no longer effective against species A. Oh, and by the way, we didn't realize that species B and C were actually going to be the ones, so we didn't include those in the vaccine and therefore we weren't, you weren't vaccinated against those, which is the reason, incidentally, the reason that some of us get the flu vaccine and we end up with the flu, right? It's because, not because the vaccine didn't work against that particular strain, but because there were either other strains that we weren't vaccinated against or because the original strain changed its surface structure just that bit so that it was like changing an overcoat from a brown overcoat to a black overcoat and the immune system didn't recognize it. And that's what's going on with the flu vaccine.

It stays one step ahead of us all the time. And this is a similar story with HIV, right? The promise of an HIV vaccine was, we'd have it within a year or two, we were told in 1980.

Still not there. These viruses are very clever at changing their surface and at hiding from the immune system and so we still don't have a good influenza vaccine. The way we make the vaccine, incidentally, is we have about 120 or so laboratories across the world. They look at samples that are sent to their lab and try and figure out exactly the kind of flu species that is prevalent. We look at Australia and what they had in their most recent influenza outbreak because it's their, you know, in their winter is our summer and we try and figure that out and incidentally they do the same for us. So it's that they look at see what happened in the northern hemisphere and adjust themselves for the oncoming flu season in the summer.

And then doctors make the best educated guess they can. And they say, well, based on the evidence that we have, the most likely species are going to be this and this and this and we're going to make the vaccine. And to this day, the majority of the, much of the vaccine is produced using eggs. The vaccine is very hard to grow.

So it's actually grown on eggs, which is the same thing that was used a century ago. And so in many respects, we're really at the beginning of the fight here against influenza by preventing it and creating a vaccine. Now, while that is all true and it's not a very effective vaccine, we must remember that in certain groups, in certain age groups, it's extremely important to get the vaccine, the high risk people, right? So those are children, the elderly, those with immune compromised conditions, people who've been taking steroids or may have undergone chemotherapy. Pregnant women, extremely important for pregnant women to get the influenza vaccine. For some reason, there are slightly more, there is an increased risk of complications from influenza. And so those are some of the high risk groups that should certainly be vaccinated.

There's no question there. In terms of everybody else, the data out there is harder to really find an effect on the flu. In fact, for instance, in the United Kingdom, those high risk groups are targeted and everybody else can sort of, well, if you want one, you can get one, go talk to your primary care doctor, but there's no campaign, right? Here in the US, we have a campaign. The CDC says, everybody over the age of six months should get vaccinated, period. That is the advice that we've given here in the United States. It's just worth pointing out that this is not the advice that is given overseas. And we can talk about why that might be another time, but it's an important difference, I think, in the way we think about the flu. So for high risk groups, it's very important. For healthy, otherwise healthy adults, the evidence is that influenza vaccine doesn't really do a whole lot.

We're still not there yet. So if we look at where we were 100 years ago and where we are today, the treatments are very different, thankfully, but we still lack real good treatments for influenza. We understand the virus in a remarkable and deep and profound way in a way that was unimaginable a century ago. So my hope then looking forward is that we really will be able to see influenza as not just a story of the past, but as a disease of the past in the way that we think about smallpox as a disease of the past, a disease that was eradicated.

Thank you for your time. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by Aaron Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to the US National Archives for allowing us to access this audio from Dr. Jeremy Brown's lecture there in 2019. Dr. Jeremy Brown is the author of influenza, the hundred year hunt to cure the deadliest disease in history. My goodness, that stat he used early on in the storytelling that in 1918, because of the massive casualties in the United States, the equivalent of 3 million today, life expectancy in the United States dropped 12 years.

In one year. And we still don't know enough about influenza and how to cure it. But we know a lot more than we used to from thinking it came from oats, to knowing deep and particular things about this disease. And knowing its genetic makeup, even, even down to the nature of the viral particles it consists of. The flu though is complex, we learn and it's ever changing and morphing like AIDS itself. These two are tough to just get they morph they change they hide the story of the flu. The story of so much more where technology and scientific and medical innovation was where it is, where it needs to go.

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