Because wartime censorship was less strict in Spain, more newspapers reported on the rising epidemic of influenza in 1918, and much of the rest of Europe thus came to refer to it misleadingly as the “Spanish flu.” But in Spain itself the occasional Orientalism remained useful in depicting the origin of the disease. (La Esquella de la tarratxa, Barcelona, 11 October 1918)
Imagining what theatergoing will be like once the public health authorities in Vienna introduce a gas mask ordinance. (Die Muskete, Vienna, 1918)
Announcement:
Flu
Citizens!
No assembly
No theater
“What sort of popular outcry is this?”
“It’s not, they’re just reading the poster where it states that any kind of assembly is forbidden.” (Nebelspalter, 1918)
Tourist woman (“the Spanish disease”): “Ha ha ha! I will do very well here!!”
Decree: Adequate nutrition is best against the Spanish disease
Announcement: Since flour has not been allocated, bread is not being distributed this week
(Humoristické listy, 1918)
Le Monde illustré editor Alfred-Jousselin reporting on remedies for the Spanish flu in November 1918. Photo caption: Pharmacists are having a hard time satisfying an excess of customers demanding potions and pills. Do not trifle with Goménol: it is the sentry who shouts at the microbes: “They shall not pass!”
(Goménol was the trademark for a concoction of Melaleuca quinquenervia from New Caledonia.)
From the main text: Alfred-Jousselin reports on the British reaction to influenza: “they told themselves that living as much as possible in the open air was the best way to avoid contagion; they went out a great deal and remained outside their home throughout the day: but, calamity of calamities, here is what an investigation done very scrupulously has revealed, that the trades most cruelly affected by influenza were precisely those whose practitioners were constantly in the open air: drivers of cars, of buses, road workers, policemen, letter carriers, firefighters, etc. So we wondered with concern if it was not the air that was developing the flu, and making it more dangerous. A new party was formed: that of the stay-at-home types, who no longer risk the tip of their noses outside: we will soon know the results that the cloistered life will have given.
To avoid a confined existence, or to heal if one is affected by malady, is there some sovereign panacea, some saving remedy? Well, no.”
(Gallica)
Influenza wreaks havoc, while the cherub of antiseptic and antifebrile medication is hard pressed to keep pace.
(Nebelspalter, 1890)
“If you don’t want to catch Spanish flu microbes, don’t tickle the patient… while he is gargling.”
(Le Pêle-mêle, Paris, 1919)
The INHALATORIUM treats flu, asphyxiating gases, and all pulmonary diseases by its unique method of inhalations.
(Le Journal, 1919)
“The flu having appeared everywhere, and particularly in England, one sees the patients above undergoing chlorine gas treatment to fight against infection of the upper airways.”
(l’Informateur Médical, Paris, 1933)
No echoes at all in our own day: “Excellency, the populace is complaining that we are doing nothing to suppress the Spanish flu.”
“The public is agitating against us quite needlessly, because we are already working. The self-determination bill for those who have not become ill with the Spanish flu is already prepared.”
(Kopřivy)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 