The U.S. Public Health Service · Episode 13 of 34 · 29 min
The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: The PHS's First Mass-Casualty Test
The 1918 influenza pandemic, the deadliest event in American public-health history with about 675,000 dead, tested what the Public Health Service could actually do. Surgeon General Rupert Blue stood up a task force under Wade Hampton Frost, and Congress voted $1 million without dissent, but the service could command nothing. Its lasting legacy was method, as house-to-house surveys helped found modern epidemiology.
Who's who
- Rupert Blue+1 more episodeSurgeon General who established the influenza task force
- Wade Hampton FrostPHS epidemiologist who led the task force and its surveys
- John W. WeeksSenator who proposed the $1 million emergency appropriation
Where it happens
- Camp Devens, MassachusettsEarly hot spot of the catastrophic second wave
- Camp Funston, KansasArmy camp often cited in popular accounts of the pandemic's start
Timeline
- April 1918Blue establishes the PHS Influenza Task Force
- August-September 1918Catastrophic second wave erupts
- Late September 1918Congress unanimously appropriates $1 million
- October 5, 1918Blue urges closing places of public assembly
- 1918-1919House-to-house surveys reported in Public Health Reports
Still debated
Death tolls are estimates, and the pandemic's geographic origin is disputed among historians. The name Spanish flu reflects wartime censorship, not origin, and historians stress that the decisive variation in outcomes was local.