Babe Ruth Caught the 1918 Flu—Twice

(Slate) ... The stories of Ruth’s home runs overshadowed a curious development on the team. During their time in Hot Springs, two of his teammates, George Whiteman and Sam Agnew, fell ill with “the grippe,” and several other players soon became sick. “The reign of the grippe and sore throats continues,” noted Boston Globe reporter Edward Martin. That same day, Henry Daily of the Boston American reported, “A perfect epidemic has run through the entire city, and almost everyone complains.” Continued

A Case of Yellow Fever

(LoC) On August 27, 1900, U.S. Army physician James Carroll allowed an infected mosquito to feed on him in an attempt to isolate the means of transmission of yellow fever. Carroll developed a severe case of yellow fever, helping his colleague, Army pathologist Walter Reed, prove that mosquitoes transmit this often-deadly disease. Prior to these findings, epidemics of yellow fever were common in the American South. Uncertain of how the disease was transmitted, many people would leave the South for the summer, the season in which the epidemics were most common, returning after the first frost. Continued

Remember: Polio -- Disease 'struck terror' into York County

York, PA (YDR) Most people don't believe Don Slaugh had polio.
He contracted the infectious disease in the summer of 1941, along with more than 100 other York countians. At least nine people died from an epidemic that year that closed schools, banned children from public events and spread fear throughout the community. The virus mostly infected children, but it also hit adults. Continued

Photo: Iron lung (c. 1933) used to "breathe" for polio patients until 1955 when polio vaccine became available is located in the Mobile Medical Museum, Mobile, Alabama (LoC)

Still Toxic After All These Years

(Aegis) Minute amounts of a World War I blister agent were found at an Aberdeen Proving Ground demolition site after a pipe was broken Tuesday.
Officials initially said nothing was found after testing, but Public Affairs Officer Robert DiMichele said Thursday afternoon that additional lab results found trace amounts of lewisite IN (sic) the pipes. The chemical agent, when in use, causes blisters when touched and in lungs when inhaled, according to DiMichele. Continued

Causes of death: 1900 and 2010

(boingboing) An editorial in the 200th anniversary issue of the New England Journal of Medicine looks at mortality and health through the centuries, and includes this chart of causes of death from the turn of the last century, which makes for quite a comparison. Continued

Emma Goldman

(LoC) Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, compelling advocate of free speech, the eight-hour work day, and birth control, was arrested in New York City on February 11, 1916, just prior to giving another public lecture on family planning. She was charged with violating the Comstock Act, an 1873 statute banning transportation of "obscene" matter through the mails or across state lines. At the time, federal courts interpreted the statute as prohibiting distribution of contraception information.
Goldman was born on June 27, 1869, in Kovno, a Russian city now part of Lithuania.Like most poor Russian Jews, Goldman's family suffered under the political oppression and anti-Semitism of imperial Russia. She fled Russia with her sister Helena in 1885, settled in Rochester, New York, and was briefly married to a fellow Russian immigrant. Goldman worked in a garment factory, and disillusioned with working conditions there, she joined the labor movement. Continued

Richmond’s Medical Miracle

(NYTimes) During the opening months of the Civil War, the streets of Richmond, Va., filled with bloodied bodies. The thousands of Confederate wounded were treated in a range of makeshift hospitals hastily established in hotels, factories and private homes. But by autumn, as hopes the conflict would be brief faded, it became clear a war of this magnitude required a modernized medical response.
That fall Samuel P. Moore, the Confederate surgeon general, secured both the facilities and the personnel to provide such a response at Chimborazo, a 40-acre plateau just east of the Confederate capital’s stately Church Hill neighborhood (the site got its name from Mount Chimborazo, an inactive volcano in Ecuador, famous at the time after being “discovered” by the German explorer-scientist Alexander von Humboldt). Occupying 150 buildings, it was one of the largest hospitals in the world, typically serving around 4,000 sick and wounded soldiers at a time. Continued

Photo: Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, a nurse/administrator at Chimborazo, who later wrote "A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond," which is still in print.

War’s Lingering Devastation In the Antietam Valley

(Historynet) ... With winter approaching there would be no harvest, and with 700 bodies buried in the despoiled fields, planting was out of the question. Although the armies moved on, the wounded would remain for up to a year, and disease would descend on the valley, carrying off many Sharpsburg civilians. Continued

Photos: 1. Antietam, Maryland. Ruins of Mumma's house on the battlefield. 2. Keedysville, Maryland (vicinity). Straw huts erected on Smith's farm used as a hospital after the battle of Antietam. (Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress)

"Boardwalk Empire" State of Drink

(Cigar Aficionado) How do you celebrate the season premiere of a television show centered on the Prohibition era? By taking a drink, of course.
That's the premise behind the promotions for two separate whiskies as HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" starts it second season on Sunday. Canadian Club and Templeton Rye, both of which have historic connections to the dry era that ensued after America's 18th Amendment took effect in 1920, are suggesting a libation may go best with the return of the critically acclaimed cable series. Continued

Photo: Enoch L. ("Nucky") Johnson

Robert Dallek on Medicare’s Complicated Birth

(American Heritage) In 1965, after winning in a landslide against Barry Goldwater and helping to carry Democratic supermajorities into both houses of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson set out to enact a battery of Great Society reforms, including Medicare, government insurance for seniors. Despite his political mandate, 60 years of conservative opposition to such a measure meant proceeding with caution. Later, California Governor Ronald Reagan, for example, would characterize the Medicare bill as the advance wave of a socialism that would “invade every area of freedom in this country.” Reagan predicted that this reform would compel Americans to spend their “sunset years telling our children and our grandchildren what it was like in America when men were free.” Continued

Potters Field in Childs: The Final Resting Place for Paupers

(WoCCP) The Cecil County Potter’s Field, the final resting place for paupers who couldn’t afford a burial, is located across from Mt. Aviat Academy. On the grounds of what was the county poorhouse, it contains some 150 to 200 unmarked graves. The Alms House, as it was also known, opened about 1776 and closed in 1952 when the county put the property up for sale. It was purchased by Elk Paper Manufacturing Company and the new owner donated part of the tract to the Oblate Sisters for Mt. Aviat Academy, a school. Continued

Photo: "Two hobos walking along railroad tracks, after being put off a train" (George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress).

When Liquor Was Prescribed as Medicine

Author Daniel Okrent describes how wealthy people managed to evade Prohibition in this episode of Slate V's Bookmark. Link

Anna Jarvis: Founder of Mother’s Day

(History's Women) Anna Marie Jarvis was born in Webster, West Virginia on May 1, 1864. According to historical records, at an early age, Anna heard her mother express hope that a memorial would be established for all mothers, living and dead. Anna’s mother, Mrs. Anna M. Jarvis, had been instrumental in developing “Mothers Friendship Day” which was part of the healing process of the Civil War. Mrs. Jarvis had established a group of Mothers' Day Work Clubs in Webster, Grafton, Fetterman, Pruntytown, and Philippi, (West Virginia) to improve health and hygiene practices and conditions, before the beginning of the Civil War. During the Civil War, Mrs. Anna Jarvis urged the Mothers' Day Work Clubs to declare their neutrality and to help both Union and Confederate soldiers. The clubs treated the wounded and fed and clothed soldiers that were stationed in the area. Continued

1889 Pandemic Didn’t Need Planes to Circle Globe in 4 Months

(Wired) The 1889 Russian flu pandemic circled the globe in just four months, captivating the world, despite the lack of airplanes or hyperventilating cable news stations.
If that was possible, closing down air traffic in the event of a new pandemic might not do much, argue the authors led by Alain-Jacques Valleron, an epidemiologist at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale in Paris.
“The rapid progression of the 1889 pandemic demonstrates that slower surface travel, even with much smaller traveler flows, sufficed to spread the pandemic across all of Europe and the United States in ~4 months,” the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 26. Continued

Frederick Law Olmsted

(LoC) Frederick Law Olmsted, nineteenth-century America's foremost landscape architect, was born on April 26, 1822. Son of a well-to-do Hartford, Connecticut, merchant, Olmsted spent much of his childhood enjoying rural New England scenery. Weakened eyesight forced him to abandon plans to attend Yale. Instead, young Olmsted studied engineering and scientific farming, putting his agricultural and managerial theories into practice on his own Staten Island farm.
A tour of England and the Continent inspired Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (1852) and a new career in journalism. Later that year, the founding editor of the New-York Daily Times (soon renamed the New York Times), Henry J. Raymond, engaged Olmsted to report on conditions in the slaveholding states. His articles were subsequently published as A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), A Journey through Texas (1857), A Journey in the Back Country (1860), and in a two-volume compilation of material from all three books, The Cotton Kingdom (1861). Together Olmsted’s keen observations created the most complete contemporary portrait of the South on the eve of the Civil War, concluding that slavery harmed the whole of Southern society. Continued

First Mention Pertussis, 1913

(NYTimes) Whooping cough has been a well-known disease for hundreds of years, and the term “pertussis” has been in use since the 18th century. Its symptoms are vivid: severe coughing spells ending with a whooping gasp for breath and a face that turns red or purple, often followed by vomiting and then a return to feeling fine until the next episode. But until the early 20th century, no one knew what caused it. Continued