The Great Influenza- Part One

The first book I chose to read was The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry. I chose to break the book in half and write about each half.

I found the first half of the book to be very repetitive. It began with several universities being mentioned that partake in research of the great influenza. Throughout the next several chapters John informs you about the symptoms of the flu and how it was commonly mistaken for a regular cold.

This pandemic was present during World War I. From September 1917 to March 1918, before the influenza epidemic struck, pneumonia struck down 30,784 soldiers on American soil. It killed 5,741 of them.

In the first part we were also introduced to William Henry Welch, the single most powerful individual in the history of American medicine and John D. Rockefeller Jr who, with Welch, created the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now known as Rockefeller University in New York, New York), arguably the best scientific research institutions in the world.

I predict the second half of this book to be much like the first; full of information about how the flu was affecting the war and everyone else in the world.