There have been several books written over the past decades discussing the impact, scope, and origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic and each book takes the narrative a little farther and a little deeper while unraveling more of the mystery of the virus that possibly killed 100 million humans. Laurey Spinney's Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World is the latest book to appear on this topic and it adds considerably to the understanding of the global catastrophic biological risk of influenza.
In this book, Spinney blends tales of incomprehensible rates of illness with new data that peers back through the molecular clock to understand the origin of this deadly virus. Most people know the story of the utter calamity the flu pandemic and the futility of medical treatments in an era when the viral origin of the infection was not yet known. All of this is covered in great detail in the book but, to me, the chief value of the book was its discussion of how this outbreak started. I will just highlight this portion of the book's narrative in this post.
"The Spanish Flu" was likely not Spanish at all and Spinney recounts three possible locations for its origin:
1. Camp Funston, Kansas: This is one of the most favored hypotheses. On March 4, 1918 an army cook fell ill with what sounds like a classic case of influenza. The camp was soon inundated with cases and the pandemic seems to follow a linear path from that time and location. It is speculated that the congregation of American solider recruits from rural areas around the country facilitated the emergence and global spread of this virus along WWI routes. Haskell County in Kansas was noted to have a severe flu-like illness outbreak in January of 1918 and, perhaps, a recruit from this area made his way to Camp Funston. Molecular analysis shows that 7 of the 8 1918 flu genes come from a North American avian flu virus.
2. China: Contemporaneous with the flu, there were reports attempting to link the outbreak to a prior appearance of what was believed to be pneumonic plague in the city of Harbin in China. This illness first appeared in 1910 and again in another city (Shansi) in the winter of 1917 and though it was reported that the plague bacilli was isolated from cases there is some doubt whether it actually was. Indeed some physicians at the time described it as a severe influenza-like illness. It is hypothesized that members of the Chinese Labor Corps (CLC), a secret Chinese effort to help the Allied war effort, brought the infection to the European front as well as to North America.
3. The camp at Etaples: This hypothesis centers on a British military encampment in France near the Western Front of WWI where in December of 1916 an outbreak of
"purulent bronchitis" consistent with influenza occurred. According to this explanation, the virus moved through pockets of people, strengthening, until the major outbreak occurred over a year a later.
The book contains a treasure of information that adds considerably and updates existing literature on this pandemic. It has been 100 years since the pandemic of 1918 and, since that time, there have been 3 subsequent pandemics yet 1918 dwarfs them all. For those of us in this field, the next flu pandemic (and probably the next and the next) are a foregone conclusion and understanding as much as possible about 1918 can only help us prepare. Pale Rider is a book that is highly valuable for that task and I unequivocally recommend it.