1918-1920 Pandemic

By Atom Bergstrom

Atom’s Blog

The influenza A virus subtype H1N1 was blamed for the pandemic of influenza and influenzal pneumonia of 1918-1920, but it wasn’t more deadly than any other flu virus.

There were multiple “germs” involved, including the Haemophilus influenzae bacillus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, plus various pneumonococci, streptococci, and even staphylococci.

Carl Friedländer discovered Klebsiella pneumoniae, and it seems to have killed him at the age of 39 or 40.

The pandemic was a witch’s brew of bad-news bugs, made much worse by the stress of the First World War.

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Most people died of an atypical “wet” form of pneumonia (bronchopneumonia “with no definite areas of concentration”) rather than the usual lobar pneumonia.

GRIEF affects the lungs, so it’s small wonder that there was so much SORROW in a world where 6,000 soldiers were being killed in combat every day up till the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

Today it’s known (by a small minority of smarter doctors) that the bronchial tree interrelates with the spleen, pancreas, liver, and small intestine.

In simpler words, sugar and salt would have helped.

Many pandemic victims died of ACIDEMIA from carbohydrate starvation.

Digitalis and caffeine (or strong coffee) saved lives too.

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Nose breathing filters out larger particles with cilia and smaller ones with lots of green snot, so, for those in the know, keeping a stiff upper lip helped prevent infection.

The mouth has no such defense, especially for people with drier mouths and low stomach acid.

The American Indians were mostly nose-breathers, so is it the lack of sugar in their diets that made them so susceptible to “germ warfare?”

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Many more people would have survived if they would have been able (assuming they had the common sense) to stay in bed under warm covers with emphasis on keeping the FEET and NECK as warm as comfortably possible.

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Dozens of various vaccines (maybe a hundred or so, some of them concocted by individual doctors) were used in the U.S. to fight the pandemic, but none of them targeted a virus.

None of the vaccines worked, so just as many people died in countries having no vaccines as died in countries using them.

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