THE SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC

tion.

Even the Barbary Apes became ill and for a time there were fears that they would be wiped out.

And then as quick as she came 'The Spanish Lady' was gone. Sci entists are still uncertain as to why the bug stopped its muderous ram page or where it went.

The Spanish flu raged around the world for just three months be tween October 1918 and January 1919 but in that short space of time it proved to be the most deadly dis ease since the Black Death of the Middle Ages claiming more than 20 million lives. The rapidly spread ing flu reached every corner of the world, including Gibraltar where 3,000 cases were reported and 111 deaths recorded.

I first learned of the Spanish flu while reading about ice hockey. Like most Canadian boys in the 1960s I was a hockey fanatic and as a lover of statistics I poured over old hockey guide books. While reading one such book I found that the 1919 Stanley Cup playoffs be tween the Victoria Cougars (my hometown team)and the Montreal Canadiens(my favourite team)had been cancelled because of the death of Montreal player Joe Hall due to Spanish flu. Not even Canada's participation in World War I had prevented the playing of the Stanley Cup, the holy grail of Ca nadian hockey, so I was a bit sur prised that the death of one player would bring it down but as a youngster I was unaware of the magnitude of the epidemic. Re cently, with fears of biological war fare all too real, the Spanish flu has been in the news again.

The flu was first reported in Spain and thus was given the tag 'The Spanish Lady' and has ever since been known as the Spanish flu but the exact source of the outbreak was never agreed upon by experts. Some said Russia, others America. Certainly the movement of vast amounts of infected American troops to Europe in World War 1 contributed to the spread. One theory,formulated by Dr.J.S. Koen was that the outbreak started on 30th September 1918 at the Swine Breeder's Show in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Koen theorised that during the mingling of the animals and the humans a mild hog flu combined with an equally mild human flu to produce a maverick killer that at tacked human lungs injuring them beyond their capacity to recover.

On the other hand a Spanish medi cal commission set up in an attempt to clear that country's name con cluded that the disease stemmed from Russian Turkestan.

The only other pandemics com parable to the Spanish flu were the fifty-year plague of Justin ian, starting in AD 542 which re portedly killed in ^ history of health, hospitals and sanitation in Gibraltar. Dr. Benady wrote that Gibraltar had suffered through a milder epidemic in May to July 1918 in hot, dry weather. There were only 21 deaths,13from pneumonia. But in late September when the worldwide epidemic start Gibraltar was hit again, this time severly.

Wrote Dr. Benady: "The incuba tion period was 30-40 hours, and the onset was

In the book,'The Plague of the Spanish Lady', by Richard Collier he quotes flu expert Sir Christopher Andrews: "I can believe that the virus goes underground and per haps does so all over the world... that it can persist in an area with out causing outbreaks... but is able to become active and epidemic when the time is ripe."

In his book Collier identifies a Dr. Juan Zamora as being responsible for treating patients in Algeciras and Gibraltar.

Dr. Zamora was sent to the re gion from his hometown of Malaquilla. He was one of the first of the medical profession to recog nize that this was no ordinary flu.

In his little town nearly every person exhibited symptoms.All he could do was to treat those symp toms according to individual needs. He found that often rest, warmth and a liquid diet proved as effec tive as 'pretentious cure-alls'.

Collier describes Dr. Zamora's attempts to save one Spanish woman who lived near Algeciras: the neighbour hood of 100 mil lion people,and the Black Death (1347-50) which is believed to have killed 37 million Asians and 25 million Europeans.

The most vul nerable to the Spanish flu were the aged and those suffering from heart,lung or kidney disease, but unusually the flu also killed millions of young men and women. The hockey player Joe Hall would have been supremely fit and was only 23-years-old.

The list ofthe dead grew longer and longer as theflu turned pandemic sudden with pains in the back and sides, fever and furred tongue. There was often bleed ing from the nose, as well as diarrhea and vomiting. Ten per cent of pa tients developed pneumonia, and some jaundice.In the survivors the convalescence was slow, with de bility and anaemia. Relapses were frequent, but few of those infected in the first epidemic suffered a sec ond attack in the autumn."

"One was the wife of the village medico. Dr. Foyato, who was him self laid up.But Senora Poyato,had been more gravely ill, and she had known it. 'Please Doctor' she begged,as Zamora made ready his hypodermic,'don't give me an in jection. It's useless. Don't you see the Holy Virgin is coming forme'."

The woman had been pointing at the bedroom ceiling,in the absolute certainty of her vision, as Zamora slid the needle into her arm.Deeply disturbed, he had felt that her ap parition possessed more power than any medical skill of his,for she was dead within hours.

Today, while the world concerns itself with the possibility of terror ist attacks using biological weapons such as smallpox or anthrax,scien tists are also concerned that a Span ish flu pandemic could happen again.

The flu in Gibraltar is covered in a book by Dr. Sam Benady on the

Many of the sufferers were mer chant seamen who had arrived in Gibraltar already in critical condi-

Collier writes: "Given that the virus believed to have caused the pandemic still exists in pigs, most virologists answer yes."

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