Healthline.com
Nov 02, 1918 · In the treatment, the patient receives as soon as possible from 10 to 20 c.c. of a saturated solution of quinin hydrochlorid. This is given intravenously and …
Top10homeremedies.com
There were no medications effective against Spanish flu or antibiotics to treat the infections that people got as complications of the flu. There were also no machines to provide mechanical ventilation and no intensive care units.
Medicalnewstoday.com
Oct 11, 2010 · With no cure for the flu, many doctors prescribed medication that they felt would alleviate symptoms… including aspirin, which had been trademarked by Bayer in 1899—a patent that expired in 1917,...
What medicine did they use for the Spanish flu?
Yes. Oseltamivir (Tamiflu® or generic), has been shown to be effective against similar influenza A(H1N1) viruses and is expected to be effective against the 1918 H1N1 virus. Other antivirals (zanamivir, peramivir and baloxavir) have not been tested against this specific virus but are expected to also be effective.
How did hospitals handle Spanish flu?
This meant that patient wards were built as physically separated buildings designed for maximum cross-ventilation, with extra space between patients, and access to the outside. The wards were connected to each other and the main hospital building by an outdoor walkway.Apr 16, 2020
How did nurses treat the Spanish flu?
Fresh laundry, water, and fluids and food were critical to combating the flu, but with so many patients it was difficult to obtain supplies. Medicines to ease the pain ran out. Clean linens and soups were used as quickly as they were made.
How long did it take to get rid of the Spanish flu?
The influenza pandemic of 1918–19, also called the Spanish flu, lasted between one and two years. The pandemic occurred in three waves, though not simultaneously around the globe.
Overview
The 1918 influenza pandemic, also known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of th…
Etymologies
This pandemic was known by many different names—some old, some new—depending on place, time, and context. The etymology of alternative names historicises the scourge and its effects on people who would only learn years later that invisible viruses caused influenza. This lack of scientific answers led the Sierra Leone Weekly News (Freetown) to suggest a biblicalframing in July 191…
History
The pandemic is conventionally marked as having begun on 4 March 1918 with the recording of the case of Albert Gitchell, an army cook at Camp Funston in Kansas, United States, despite there having been cases before him. The disease had already been observed 200 miles away in Haskell County as early as January 1918, prompting local doctor Loring Miner to warn the editors of the U.S. Public …
Epidemiology and pathology
The basic reproduction number of the virus was between 2 and 3. The close quarters and massive troop movements of World War Ihastened the pandemic, and probably both increased transmission and augmented mutation. The war may also have reduced people's resistance to the virus. Some speculate the soldiers' immune systems were weakened by malnourishment, as well as the s…
Responses
While systems for alerting public health authorities of infectious spread did exist in 1918, they did not generally include influenza, leading to a delayed response. Nevertheless, actions were taken. Maritime quarantines were declared on islands such as Iceland, Australia, and American Samoa, saving many lives. Social distancingmeasures were introduced, for example closing schools, thea…
Mortality
The Spanish flu infected around 500 million people, about one-third of the world's population. Estimates as to how many infected people died vary greatly, but the flu is regardless considered to be one of the deadliest pandemicsin history. An early estimate from 1927 put global mortality at 21.6 million. An estimate from 1991 states that the virus killed between 25 and 39 million peop…
Effects
Academic Andrew Price-Smith has made the argument that the virus helped tip the balance of power in the latter days of the war towards the Allied cause. He provides data that the viral waves hit the Central Powers before the Allied powers and that both morbidity and mortality in Germany and Austria were considerably higher than in Britain and France. A 2006 Lancet study corroborates higher exc…
Legacy
Despite the high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the epidemic, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness over the decades until the arrival of news about bird flu and other pandemics in the 1990s and 2000s. This has led some historians to label the Spanish flu a "forgotten pandemic". However, this label has been challenged by the historian Guy Beiner, who has c…