As World War I drew to a close in November 1918, the influenza virus that took the lives of an estimated 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919 began its deadly ascent. The United States had faced flu pandemic before, in 1889-90 for example, but the 1918 strain represented an altogether new and aggressive mutation that proved unusually resistant to human attempts to curb its lethality. The devastating effects of the virus, known today as H1N1, were first felt in late summer 1918 along the eastern seaboard in a military encampment outside of Boston. From there, influenza propagated ruthlessly across the country, claiming nearly 700,000 lives before running its course in the spring and summer of 1919.
The pandemic hit Philadelphia exceptionally hard after sailors, carrying the virus from Boston, arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in early September 1918. In a city of almost two million people, a half a million or more contracted influenza over the next six months. Equally as startling, over 16,000 perished during this period, with an estimated 12,000 deaths occurring in little more than five weeks between late September and early November 1918. Historians and epidemiologists have identified several critical factors that shaped Philadelphia’s experience with influenza and help explain the peculiarly rapid and catastrophic spread of disease.
First, a severe shortage of medical personnel rendered the city partially defenseless against the pandemic. More than 25 percent of Philadelphia’s doctors, some 850 total, and an even greater share of its nurses were occupied with the war effort. In 1917 and 1918, three-quarters of the staff of Pennsylvania Hospital at Eighth and Spruce Streets was stationed at the Red Cross Base Hospital 10 in Le Tréport, France. Over two dozen physicians, fifty nurses, and nearly 200 aid workers with hospital training were called overseas, depriving the city of a skilled group of men and women on the eve of the pandemic. The absence of vital medical support made the difficult task of containing the flu and healing the sick even more challenging once the virus migrated from the military camps—including the Navy Yard, Camp Dix in New Jersey, and Camp Meade in Maryland—to the civilian population in late September.
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