- "Children skipped rope to the rhyme
"I had a little bird, Its name was Enza. I opened the window and in-flu-enza."
Meanwhile, evidence of the scourge around them mounte d.
-
- The city handed out gauze masks to stem
the spread of the flu. In Erie Basin, "People tied handkerchiefs and
scarves around their faces to protect themselves when they went outside,"
Granna recalled.
-
-
- From Patricia Doyle, PhD
- 5-27-7
-
- Hello, Jeff -- Thanks to your progarm
and website and to guests like Dr. Henry Niman, people are armed with information.
The informed will know how to avoid infection simply by some common sense
and prudence when it comes to hygiene.
-
- Burying our heads in the sand and keeping
silent for fear of panicing the public is not the way to address the situation.
Information will stop any panic. Preparation will ensure survival should
a pandemic occur.
-
- Jeff, your listeners and those who read
the countless articles on H5N1 will do OK during any outbreak. Preparations
with food, extra medicines and necessities will be half of the battle.
Many people will not get the flu, but countless millions around the globe
will be effected by food, medicine and other shortages.
-
- No one knows for sure if or when H5N1
will go pandemic among humans. Scientists do know, however, that eventually
a pandemic will occur. Why not prepare now as though it was just around
the corner?
-
- And remember - good hygene is the best
armament against any influenza virus or contagious disease.
-
- Patricia Doyle
-
-
- Memories Of 1918 Flu Pandemic
Haunt 21st Century
- By Toni Reinhold
- 5-27-6
-
- NEW YORK (Reuters) - As health agencies
worldwide scramble to stop bird flu from becoming a pandemic that could
claim millions of lives, memories of the murderous flu that swept the globe
almost 100 years ago haunt the 21st century, passed on from generation
to generation, or, in my case, from grandmother to granddaughter.
-
- My grandmother lived through the Great
War, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War Two, the cultural
revolution of the '60s and three decades beyond.
-
- There was little that could threaten
her nerve but until the day she died, Marie Starace was afraid of two things.
One was lightning. The other was "The Grip" -- the deadly flu
that wreaked havoc on the Brooklyn, New York, neighbourhood where she was
born and raised.
-
- So vivid were her memories of the influenza
pandemic of 1918-19 that whenever she saw us with open coats and throats
exposed to the cold, she would gravely warn: "Button up or you'll
get the grip." When I was a teenager -- about 50 years after the horrible
episode -- I had the sense to ask what this dreaded "grip" was.
-
- "It was a terrible thing. So many
people died from the grip when I was a little girl that it seemed like
every family lost someone," my grandmother told me.
-
- "It was heartbreaking to see mothers
crying for their children. Some of them lost two and three children. I'll
never forget one woman crying in my mother's arms because she lost her
children and her husband."
-
- "People didn't want to say when
someone in their house was sick because the place would be quarantined
and no one could get out to work," Granna recalled.
-
- "Some people went out in the middle
of the night to get the undertaker because they didn't want it to get around
that someone in their house had died from the flu. They were afraid of
being reported to the Health Department and quarantined."
-
- 'SPANISH FLU'
-
- The flu that killed an estimated 20 million
to 100 million people worldwide was known in the United States as the Spanish
flu or "La Grippe" because it ravaged Spain early on.
-
- Studies show that it was caused by an
avian flu virus -- the H1N1 strain -- that could be passed from human to
human. The fear today is that the current H5N1 strain of bird flu could
mutate and do the same.
-
- In 1918, word of the illness in Europe
was carried to Brooklyn's shores by troops returning from the battlefields
of World War One and seamen who helped breathe life into New York City's
ports. It was suspected that some of them carried the flu as well.
-
- My grandmother lived on Van Brunt Street
in an area of Brooklyn known as Red Hook. Folks on Van Brunt called their
patch Erie Basin for the water basin that was a port to ships from around
the world. My great-grandfather, Salvator Starace, earned a living there
as a longshoreman and ship's pilot.
-
- Erie Basin bustled with hard-living,
hard-working families, many of them European immigrants and their children.
-
- Granna had her ninth birthday on November
11, 1918 -- the day peace was declared in "the war to end all wars"
-- and she hiked to an armoury with throngs of Brooklynites to mark the
day. It was a long walk from the docks but for a precocious youngster it
was part of the thrilling and gritty life of early 20th century Brooklyn.
-
- "There was a big parade. I marched
alongside the soldiers and one of them gave me a nickel. People were crying
because the war was over," she recalled.
-
- An ocean of tears would be shed in the
months that followed as the country returned to mourning -- this time for
victims of The Grip.
-
- SOUP FOR THE SICK
-
- "Momma would make soup and bring
it to the sick," Granna told me. "A lot of them were very poor
and the war didn't help. We didn't have so much but she did the best she
could."
-
- As the flu spread, my great-grandmother,
Antonia, had to take greater care lest she bring it home to her children.
"It got so bad that momma had to leave the soup at people's front
doors," she said.
-
- The Grip caused high fevers, headaches,
coughing, pain, and a pneumonia so virulent that it left people struggling
for breath until they suffocated. Death came quickly by many accounts.
-
- "They had a hacking cough and raging
fevers," Granna said. "But they couldn't go to hospitals even
if they wanted to because they were filled up. And they died so fast."
-
- By many accounts, hospital staffs were
severely depleted as doctors and nurses succumbed to the flu. "Men
who had been medics in the Army tried to help the sick. But there was no
place to put them," Granna said.
-
- Children skipped rope to the rhyme "I
had a little bird, Its name was Enza. I opened the window and in-flu-enza."
Meanwhile, evidence of the scourge around them mounted.
-
- The city handed out gauze masks to stem
the spread of the flu. In Erie Basin, "People tied handkerchiefs and
scarves around their faces to protect themselves when they went outside,"
Granna recalled.
-
- "It seemed like there was a black
wreath on almost every door," my grandmother said of the markers of
loss. "So many people died that they ran out of space for the dead.
Bodies were put on ice inside horse-drawn trucks that came around to pick
up the dead. There were hardly any funerals. I don't know how they could
have had that many funerals. And besides, people were afraid to go to church."
-
- ONLY MINUTES FOR FUNERALS
-
- By a number of accounts, bodies piled
up as morgues ran out of space and the supply of coffins dwindled. At a
time when wakes for the dead were often held at home, funerals were restricted
to only minutes to limit people's exposure to each other.
-
- Potters Field, a burial ground for the
poor and anonymous on Hart Island in New York City, became a resting place
for some of Erie Basin's dead because their families couldn't afford cemetery
plots, my grandmother said.
-
- "No one really knew what to do.
No one knew how to treat it. What could anyone do? You couldn't stop living,"
Granna said.
-
- In 1918, 4,514 people in Brooklyn died
from influenza from a population of 1,798,513, according to almanacs published
in 1918 and 1920 by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper. Thousands more
had been infected but survived.
-
- Over the years, I spent many hours with
my grandmother talking about the past and her memories of The Grip were
consistent. I walked the streets of Erie Basin with her when I was a little
girl, visiting her father who lived on Van Brunt street until he died in
the 1960s. My great-grandmother died in the 1970s. Granna died in 1996.
-
- But as I read the stories about the spread
of bird flu today and six members of a family in north Sumatra dying from
the H5N1 virus in eight days, I hear Granna's voice warning: "Button
up or you'll get The Grip."
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
-
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases"
message board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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