The Influenza Book

Posted on March 29, 2005 by sheila

Alongside of Middlemarch, I am also reading The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (the story of the 1918 epidemic). It’s strange, how the two books are … dovetailing, quite by accident. I didn’t design it that way! Middlemarch has, as one of its sub-plots, the controversies in the medical profession between new techniques and old received techniques … and this, as is probably not a surprise, is one of the main themes of the Influenza book.

I’m only at the beginning of the Influenza book. (Ahem. I’ll say I’m only at the beginning. We’re still just discussing Hippocrates – so there’s a long way to go until World War I!) No, I’m teasing. It’s very interesting. A brief history of medical techniques, but more than that: medical philosophy, how diseases were viewed, and how certain techniques were passed on from generation to generation without question.

Good old Declaration-of-Independence-signer Dr. Benjamin Rush is mentioned quite a bit; also his “Let’s bleed everyone in sight!!” philosophy comes under some scrutiny. Heh. “Everyone should be bled. Whether they are sick or not!! The paler and weaker they get, the BETTER!”

Anyway, it’s interesting. Especially because so much of Lydgate’s conflict (at least so far in Middlemarch is dealing with these older more establishment types who are resistant to change.)

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10 Responses to The Influenza Book

  1. lydgate says:
    March 29, 2005 at 10:40 pm

    Never heard of the Great Influenza, but Middlemarch is one of my favorite books. I also love Portrait of the Artist. Looks like I’ll be reading your blog :)

  2. j swift says:
    March 29, 2005 at 11:28 pm

    The Flu epidemic of 1918 was not covered by any of my teachers or professors. I had not read or heard about until several years ago. WWI overshadowed it, even though it killed 10’s of millions maybe up to as many 40 million, approximately 600k in the US.

    There is a good PBS video on it called “Influenza 1918” and a book by Gina Kolata.

  3. spd rdr says:
    March 30, 2005 at 6:57 am

    “The Great Influenza” is not a great book (the author tends to go long and repeat himself) but the story is so compelling, and tragic, that I couldn’t put the book down. Needless to say, you’ll never look at a headline stating “flu outbreak” the same sanguine way again.

  4. red says:
    March 30, 2005 at 8:43 am

    Lydgate:

    With a screenname like that I am not surprised that Middlemarch is one of your faves. :)

  5. red says:
    March 30, 2005 at 8:47 am

    spd rdr: Yeah, I would definitely not say it’s a great book, or well-written. But a very interesting story.

    I had influenza in Ireland during a nurses strike. Long story. I’ve never been so ill and so laid-low in my life. I thought I was going to die.

  6. Linus says:
    March 30, 2005 at 3:07 pm

    So, Red, I bought Middlemarch (didn’t think I would, right?) but made the tactical error of taking it with me on the recent Austin trip. Error because it’s a bit heavy for carting around to read on planes, and since I was blitheringly tired the whole time I ended up starting a much easier Ian Rankin detective book on a friend’s recommendation. I made it as far as the first couple of chapters of the Eliot, and it feels like it will be a luxurious read. But no fun at all if I’m going to be distracted and inattentive.

  7. red says:
    March 30, 2005 at 3:33 pm

    Linus –

    Luxurious, indeed – and also at times surprisingly funny – I love the humor of it. She talks about one woman who gets so upset and breathes through her mouth so that she sounds like “a deranged barrel-organ”.

    heh heh

    I’m really digging it. It’s moving along quite well now, now that I know most of the characters and don’t have to keep flipping back and forth to remind myself: “who is that again??” etc.

  8. Linus says:
    March 30, 2005 at 5:54 pm

    I’m so glad I’m not the only one who does that!

  9. Stevie says:
    March 30, 2005 at 7:56 pm

    This post of yours sorta freaked me out, Red, because not only did my grandfather die in the 1918 epidemic, but I attended Benjamin Rush elementary school! Okay, maybe it’s not so freaky, but it seemed like it at the time.

  10. Laura (southernxyl) says:
    March 30, 2005 at 9:53 pm

    I liked that book too. The 1918 flu epidemic is one of my hobbies.

    Here’s our family story. My grandfather had just joined the army and was at boot camp when the epidemic hit. He became so sick that the medical people (doubtlessly stretched beyond their capacity) actually thought he had died. His parents were telegraphed to come and collect his body. They had a makeshift morgue set up in a room somewhere, and they put his “corpse” there while his parents were traveling. It’s a good thing they could make the trip, because I guess he would have gone into a mass grave otherwise. Well, somebody walked through the room and saw him move, so he was back in the infirmary when his parents got there. The war was over for him, of course. He died before I was born, of lung disease; he blamed the flu for ruining his lungs, and it probably did, although smoking certainly didn’t help.

    I too thought of Lydgate when I read the first part of the book.

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