The Great Influenza (27 page)

6. The virus swept first through military bases, where men were jammed together despite the objections of Welch and Army Surgeon General William Gorgas. This is an army emergency hospital, probably a ward for convalescents.

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7. Army Surgeon General William Gorgas was determined that this would be the first war in which fewer American soldiers died of disease than from combat.

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8. Rupert Blue, the civilian surgeon general and head of the U.S. Public Health Service, was a master bureaucrat but failed to heed warnings of, seek advance information about, or prepare for the epidemic.

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9. Massachusetts was the first state to suffer huge numbers of civilian deaths. This is a hospital in Lawrence.

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10. I n Philadelphia the number of dead quickly overwhelmed the city's ability to handle bodies. It was forced to bury people, without coffins, in mass graves and soon began using steam shovels to dig the graves.

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Posters and handouts spread warnings and advice. They also spread terror.

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13. The two messages in this photograph (the policeman's protective mask and patriotism) epitomized a conflict of interest in public officials.

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14. All New York City workers wore masks. Note the absence of traffic on the street and pedestrians on the sidewalk. The same silent streets were seen everywhere. In Philadelphia a doctor said, 'The life of the city had almost stopped.'

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15. Oswald T. Avery as a private, when the Rockefeller Institute became Army Auxiliary Laboratory Number One.

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16. A very in later life. Persistent and tenacious, he said, 'Disappointment is my daily bread. I thrive on it.' Welch asked him to find the cause of influenza. His work on influenza and pneumonia would ultimately lead him to one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth century.

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17. William Park, who made New York City's municipal laboratories a premier research institution. His rigorous scientific discipline, when teamed with the more creative temperament of Anna Williams [below], led to dramatic advances, including the development of a diphtheria antitoxin still in use. The National Academy of Sciences hoped they could develop a serum or vaccine for influenza.

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18. Anna Wessel Williams was probably the leading female bacteriologist in the world. A lonely woman who never married, she told herself she would 'rather [have] discontent than happiness through lack of knowledge,' and wondered 'if it would be worthwhile to make the effort to have friends and if so how I should go about it.' From her earliest memories, she dreamed 'about going places. Such wild dreams were seldom conceived by any other child.'