Influenza
tends to perplex social historians because it is a protean,
sphinx-like infection that is forever changing its medical
identity. In the early Victorian period influenza was
regarded as a miasmatic disease - one that, like cholera or
malaria, was thought to be due to atmospheric and
environmental 'influences'. Following the 'Russian'
influenza pandemic of the early 1890s, however, it
increasingly came to be regarded as a 'nervous' disease -
one that, as this image from an 1895 edition ofFunsuggests,
could fell burly London policeman. As with H1N1 swine flu
in 2009, the Russian flu pandemic also provoked widespread
dread - a dread far in excess of influenza's actual
destructiveness. My academic work seeks to explore these
paradoxes by drawing on official government documents,
reports in the medical and popular press, and the diaries
and letters of prominent doctors and celebrity patients.
“The Great Dread:cultural
and psychological impacts and responses to the ‘Russian’
influenza in the United Kingdom, 1889-93”,Social
History of MedicineAugust
2010.