~ by Julia Pearson
Going Viral in 1918
It has been one hundred years since the Great Flu Pandemic, which struck late in the spring of 1918. The hand of history recorded that World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The worldwide influenza epidemic claimed an estimated 50 million people. Within months more people were downed by this deadly virus, with victims including many young adults along with the elderly and young children. Rampant in urban and rural areas, the flu afflicted a quarter of the population of the United States, with the average life expectancy lowered by 12 years. Cemeteries have clusters of headstones with death dates of this time. In family bibles, neat rows of family members’ passings during 1918 document the tragic impact of influenza.
This scourge emerged in two phases. The first phase showed up in the late spring and was known as the“ three day fever.” It struck victims without warning and they recovered after a few days. The disease resurfaced in the fall, striking fast and viciously. Some victims died within hours of the appearance of symptoms; others succumbed after a few days. Fluid filled their lungs and suffocated them to death.
In Indiana the Great Pandemic officially lasted from September 1918 to February 1919, with a second wave of severe respiratory illness the following winter as well. The exact date the flu was first recognized within the state was September 20, 1918. This health disaster marched from the southwest tip of the state in Evansville to Indianapolis five days later. The Indiana State Board of Health issued an order warning of the pandemic to all county and city health officers. Preventive measures called for the exclusion of those with colds from public gatherings. The following week, the Board of Health imposed a ban on all public gatherings. Churches opened for prayer but not large services. Public funerals were banned. Coughs and sneezes were to be stifled with handkerchiefs, while Evansville enacted an anti-spitting ordinance. In Indianapolis, schools were closed and it was mandatory to wear masks in the marketplace and on streetcars, as well as in offices and factories. Halloween parties were banned. Newspapers everywhere carried ads for Dr. Jones’ Liniment, Mendenhall’ s Chill and Fever Tonic, and Father John’ s Medicine. Surely the mandated health measures limited its impact: about 25 % of the national population was afflicted compared to Indiana where 12 % were touched by the disease.
Brown County had several doctors to help it through this mean chapter. Dr. Selfridge was in Helmsburg during 1917 – 1929. He is immortalized in a ditty that can be found in Brown County Remembers, published by the Brown County Historical Society: In 1920 Dr. Selfridge gave us whiskey for the mean old flu; He drank it too. He went far and wide to get a baby, At evening tide. He drove a great horse, Which he called Marie. She could pace a blue streak, Before she came to Bean Blossom Creek.
Dr. Alfred J. Ralphy, a native son of Nashville and who practiced the art of
medicine in Brown County, travelled many miles to treat flu patients with medicines he carried in his medical bag that set just in front of his saddle. He lived in New Bellsville at the time of the flu epidemic. His daughter, Gladys Ralphy Whitaker, remembered that her father“ never lost even one patient. He didn’ t get the flu himself but the strain weakened him for the rest of his life.” He died at age 74 years in 1928. Ralphy’ s actual medical office from that era is now preserved on the northeast corner of the Pioneer Village museum complex in Nashville.
There were several midwives in the county who helped with neighbors’ illnesses as well as delivering babies. They could arrive by buggy, horseback, or walking in less time than it would take doctors to travel to a homebound patient.
It is interesting to note that the first inoculations against communicable disease given to children in Brown County schools took place a little more than a decade later, at Needmore in 1932. Drs. John Luzzaders, father and son, came to the school and administered antitoxin furnished by the federal government. They received 50 cents per child and parents of twenty-three children wanted the inoculations. The following school year, the families of Clarence Robertson and Ira Chitwood had diphtheria in their homes. None of the children who had been vaccinated came down with diphtheria. The deaths of a teacher and two children the next year made vaccinations more widely accepted.
A few years later a couple children who moved into the Needmore school became seriously ill with smallpox. The entire school had been exposed. Most of the parents agreed to have their children vaccinated and Dr. Harry Murphy of Morgantown was called. For a charge of 50 cents each the students were vaccinated for smallpox. •