Being a history geek and walking thru cemantaries I do see a large number of gravestones from that era and people dying there 40s...have we learned anything? Imagine the railroads being shut down because of a world wide lack of workers to make stuff.
I have never heard about massive declines in rail traffic as a result of disease outbreaks in that era.
The Spanish Flu or the Great Influenza that broke out just around the end of the First World War did not seem to have a negative impact on rail traffic.
I have heard that the cholera epidemic of the 1830s had a negative impact on canal traffice but I would defer to the expertise of a towpath antiquarian on that one
kevin
Interesting your bringing up the cholera epidemic of the 1830's.
I've begun reading a history of railroading in New Jersey, and at the time the Camden and Amboy railroad, the first in NJ, was being built there was a canal being dug not far away. Canal digging had to be stopped due to a cholera epidemic among the workers, many of whom died. The railroad, interestingly, wasn't affected at all.
The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919 apparantly was such a horror that when it was over it seemed to be shoved to the back of the collective conciousness and forgotten. Last year there was a mass burial site of unmarked graves located in New Jersey and there was a mystery as to what it was all about. No-one seemed to know. It took a bit of research to find out it dated from the Spanish Flu years, the dead were buried quickly with no time for proper markers. And the site never was marked.
There was a morbid little poem kids recited at the time...
"I had a little bird, her name was Enza, I opened up the window and in-flew-Enza!"
When President Woodrow Wilson heard it he was shocked. "You mean to tell me children came up with that?"
divebardave Being a history geek and walking thru cemantaries I do see a large number of gravestones from that era and people dying there 40s...have we learned anything? Imagine the railroads being shut down because of a world wide lack of workers to make stuff.
There was a good TV documentary on the Spanish Flu outbreak maybe 10 years ago or so. I don't remember now if it was PBS or History Channel or what, but I'm sure it's available somewhere.
One railway connection was someone years later got a map and followed the path of a British passenger train carrying troops returning home from the war in 1919. The men had unknowingly been exposed to the flu on the continent. At each town where one or more soldiers got off the train, a flu outbreak occured, so you could follow the spread of the disease by following the rail line.
In big cities, it wasn't unusual for street corners to have a stack of coffins with dead people waiting to be picked up like you'd put out your garbage and recycling at the curb today. An oddity is it most often affected healthy people in their 20's - 40's, unlike most illness where the very young and very old are most vulnerable. I've wondered if that's why for a generation there seemed to be so many books, movies, even early TV shows (Lassie) with a kid or kids being raised by their grandparents?
The standard annual flu kills 35K+ in the USA alone. The COVID-2019 originating in Wuhan so far has about 1200 to its 'credit', and it is seemingly about to be contained, at least in the Wuhan area. Outside of Wuhan, all bets are off.
A great resource for the 1918 flu epidemic is "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barrie. The "Spanish Flu" name came from the fact that Spain was neutral in WW1 and their newspapers were not censoring reports on the flu.
The 1918 flu was unusual in targeting young adults.
Erik_MagA great resource for the 1918 flu epidemic is "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barrie. The "Spanish Flu" name came from the fact that Spain was neutral in WW1 and their newspapers were not censoring reports on the flu. The 1918 flu was unusual in targeting young adults.
My father lost a brother to the 1918 flu - My father was 4 at the time and his brother was 2.
The 1968 Flu season cost me my mother - she had had Scarlet Fever as a child which left her heart damaged - the stresses of contacting the flu created the conditions for her to have a heart attack.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD Erik_Mag A great resource for the 1918 flu epidemic is "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barrie. The "Spanish Flu" name came from the fact that Spain was neutral in WW1 and their newspapers were not censoring reports on the flu. The 1918 flu was unusual in targeting young adults. My father lost a brother to the 1918 flu - My father was 4 at the time and his brother was 2. The 1968 Flu season cost me my mother - she had had Scarlet Fever as a child which left her heart damaged - the stresses of contacting the flu created the conditions for her to have a heart attack.
Erik_Mag A great resource for the 1918 flu epidemic is "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barrie. The "Spanish Flu" name came from the fact that Spain was neutral in WW1 and their newspapers were not censoring reports on the flu. The 1918 flu was unusual in targeting young adults.
I thank you for disclosing your personal story.
The flu claims a non-trivial number of the very young, old or the weakened. The 1918 flu, for some not fully understood reason, took the lives of young adult men who you think could shrug it off. It progressed into a pneumonia, and there are accounts of young men confined to sickbed in hospital wards or tents, where their last days were spent listening to the heart-rending coughing of their wardmates.
The strain of Corona virus in question is progressing to pneumonia in otherwise strong, healthy adults. Just because "only" a thousand people have perished, almost all in a region in China, doesn't mean this illness won't yet spread.
I hope our CDC in collaboration with the WHO and the alphabet agencies here and worldwide maintain vigiliance and that affected as well as health people maintain the recommended precautions.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul MilenkovicThe strain of Corona virus in question is progressing to pneumonia in otherwise strong, healthy adults. Just because "only" a thousand people have perished, almost all in a region in China, doesn't mean this illness won't yet spread. I hope our CDC in collaboration with the WHO and the alphabet agencies here and worldwide maintain vigiliance and that affected as well as health people maintain the recommended precautions.
Considering China's historical secretiveness with internal news and their control of their internal media outlets - I would expect the actual number of fatalities to be well in excess of what they are reporting - a factor of 5 or 10 times I don't think is out of order.
Balt,
My family was fortunate in not losing ayone to the flu, though one great grandfather succumbed to tuberculosis in the 1890's.
Barrie's book on the Great Inflluenza starts out with the worst nightmare of anyone working in public health is the repeat of the 1918 pandemic.
I found that Spanish flu burial site story I mentioned earlier, and here it is for those who care to read it.
https://www.nj.com/news/g66l-2019/01/58460381575147/hundreds-were-buried-in-unmark.html
Just for comparisons's sake, New Jersey lost 3,427 killed in World War One.
It lost 10,000 to the Spanish Flu.
I live in Virginia now, and looked at the stats for the same. Virginia lost 4,000 dead in World War One, it lost 16,0000 to the Spanish flu.
That's just two states out of the 48 at the time. I chose my word carefully when I called it a horror.
When a boy I had a neighbor who was a WW1 vet. He told of being on a troop ship headed for France. The flu broke out shortly after his ship left New York. Troops were beded in racks in the ship's hold. It became a hell afloat.
The deck in the troops quarters became a mass of slime from the sick. The old vet told about being unable to get out of his sleeping rack for days. The men were checked routinely and given what aid that could be given.
Those not responding were inspected. The dead were removed and buried at sea. There was a steady routine of burials at sea.
The ship was not an especially fast. The ship must not have been a liner converted to troop transport. The flu largely ran its course by the time the ship docked in France.
My grandfather was a minister in S. E. Ohio. I have few memories of him. I asked my mother and aunts what stories they were told as children about the flu epidemic. I was told my grandfather sadly related of being weary from constantly presiding over funerals for flu victims.
"Last year there was a mass burial site of unmarked graves located in New Jersey and there was a mystery as to what it was all about. No-one seemed to know. It took a bit of research to find out it dated from the Spanish Flu years"------OH GREAT now on top of this we have our old freind back-DBD!
There is an interesting fact about the 1918 flu. It appears that the highest percentage of deaths occurred in persons 18 - 45 years old. For some reason that group had too good of an imune reaction. for some reason the imune system would go haywire and kill that age group. Youngsters and older persons with less active imune systems had higher survival rates. See Wiki.
EDIT. By 1919-1920 the more virilent strain died out and a milder strain prevailed with a lower percentage of deaths. Let us hope that does not happen to the world this time ? Present deaths in China at last check was about 1 in 40 some who get infected.
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The 1918 Influenza has an interesting 'side story' that goes along with the '1918 Outbreak'. Since moving to Kansas some years back, there was a story that circuated around as to the origin of the outbreak. That 'tale' is that the outbreak was started in the packed Army Camp at Fort Riley, Kansas. It was a staging area for troops being gathered for deployment to the WWI battlefields of Europe.
Purportedly, it was caused by the burning of dung from the Stables at Ft. Riley, and was transmitted within the clouds, emminating from those burning dung heaps(?)... I asked 'the question', on a visit several years ago, when visiting the Museums and Base at Ft. Riley; The answer was almost universally, that everyone had heard that same story, and did not have any information that it was NOT valid(?). So I guess it is true, or an accepted Urban Ledgend (?).
The Flu was carried overseas, and spread by the deploying troops, and anyone they came in contact with while enroute(?)
That tale would seem to support the age range for Deploying Troops, and medically, that there were not any mass efforts at innoculations against the flu at those times. As the flu spread boty here in America; as well as overseas, it seemed that hospitalization was a major way they fought the disease.
Hospitalization was so heavily used that the doctors and nursing staffs were streatched to the limits.
The Red Cross stepped in to provide large numbers of nurses both at home, and overseas. Because of the Red Cross' participation in the war efforts on all fronts; they were granted the 'rights' by the Federal Government to have their 'deceased' honored with military funerals and burials, for those who died when serving in the Flu epidemic.
There is a lot of evidence pointing towards western Kansas as the origin of the 1918 flu. There were reports of a mild flu showing up in January 1918 and the conjecture was that some of the draftees carried the flu to Fort Riley and other induction centers. The winter of 1918 was very cold, the barracks were not well heated and the combination made for an ideal envrionment to spread the flu. This then lead to the flu spreading to Europe where it became much more virulent and that strain got back to the US by late summer of 1918.
From what I've read about how the flu got spread, it seems that the world would have been much better off if the US had stayed out of WW1, albeit that is much more apparent in hindsight as it is extremely unlikely that anyone would have been able to predict the 1918 flu beforehand. On a related note, I was pzzled as to why Orwell put a mention of "liberty cabbage" in "1984", after reading Barrie's book, "The Geat Influenza", I could see why (hint: look up what George Creel and J. Edgar Hoover were doing in WW1).
Corona Virus aka Covid 19 is affecting IM Carloadings on West Coast-
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/east-bay/port-of-oakland-officials-wary-of-long-term-economic-impacts-of-covid-19/2235186/
Locking. Off topic.
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
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