And its case fatality rate - the percentage of deaths among all cases of flu - was estimated at 2.5%, as compared with the 0.1% ascribed to the more usual outbreaks of influenza.īut beyond its raw power, the epidemic had two other crucial characteristics. Estimates of deaths due to influenza worldwide, obviously very inexact, are quoted as from 20 to 100 million persons. population, and perhaps 20% of people worldwide. It traveled across the United States in weeks, the entire globe in only a few months, and it could have a terrifyingly rapid course, progressing from early symptoms to death in a day.

First, it was powerful - fast, big, and dangerous. There are three characteristic themes that Kolata repeatedly associates with the epidemic nature of the 1918 flu. This book, focusing on the story of another epidemic disease, is a wonderful example of the twentieth-century consensus about the nature of epidemics. Historians have recently written much about epidemics in an effort to understand and explain the impact of AIDS. But the book also offers interesting insights into what our concept of an epidemic is. The story of the 1918 influenza epidemic is an important one, and this work reviews it well.

$24.00.Īlthough intended for a general audience, this book should interest many historians. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75.2 (2001) 345-346

Gina kolata influenza