Please take a few minutes to watch the two short videos below:
Below is the most-watched YouTube documentary on the topic of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic — if you have time to watch (over 4 million views):
Now for my family's own stories.......
My father's younger sister, about age 7, died of "the aftereffects of the flu." Something like the 1990 film Awakenings? Full movie HERE at YouTube, albeit poor quality. I highly recommend the film! It is available via Amazon Prime Video.
Dad occasionally spoke of what happened when his sister died: "The undertaker embalmed Chrissie at the house — and dumped the blood behind the barn." The funeral service and burial were private. The influenza didn't stop until everything was shut down: schools, funerals, churches, etc. And the government refused to believe that something terrible was happening with Americans' health. Until, that is, bodies began piling up on the sidewalks and in the streets of Washington, D.C.
My maternal grandmother (1898-1981) had a robust immune system. It fell to her to take care of her brother Walter, who brought influenza to their remote location in the mountains of East Tennessee when he was discharged from the US Army, fell ill himself, and gave the flu to his brother-in-law Fred, my grandmother's husband. My grandmother sent her two children, one born in 1916 and the other in 1918 to her parents' farm and took care of Walter and Fred.
My grandmother related the story of those days in this way: "I got almost no sleep. I went back and forth between the river for cold water and the menfolks' foreheads. They were out of their heads with fever. My sister brought food, called to me, and set the food down about 25 feet from the house; I fetched the food from there. I don't remember how long all this went on. Seemed like forever. But Walter and Fred got well, and life went back to normal." I asked Wawa how she stood those weeks of hard work as a nurse. Her response: "Life isn't about what you want to do. Life is about what you have to do."
A view of the front lines of this grim war against Coronavirus (dated March 23, 2020): The Growing Chaos Inside New York’s Hospitals.
And one more thing...in the immortal words of Gilda Radner:
I recall watching the interview with Mrs. Edna Register Boone a few weeks ago. She eloquently revisits her family's experience with the 1918 flu pandemic and credits her family's survival to the 1/2 tsp of soda added to her morning glass of water every day.
ReplyDeleteQuote from the video:
">”My mother would take a half a teaspoonful of soda and put it in a glass of water for each of us, my twin brothers and for me and we would drink that before breakfast.
I've often thought that that's what saved us. She said that that soda would neutralize the system and we would be less subject to pick up the germ.
It must have worked because we were the only family in entire area that escaped having that dreadful flu. “
*************
via https://www.md-health.com/Drinking-Baking-Soda.html
For Cold or Flu
Baking soda has been demonstrated to reduce the duration of cold and flu, frequently eliminating symptoms in 36 hours. Experts recommend the following dosage schedule.
Day 1 - Take six doses of baking soda in glass of water at about two-hour intervals.
Day 2 - Take four doses of baking soda in a glass of water at the same intervals.
Day 3 - Take two doses of baking soda in a glass of water in the morning and in the evening, and after that only once each morning until cold symptoms are gone.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteHave you tried that baking soda regimen?
We're using it in our household now as a precaution. Spouse is subject to seasonal asthma and has been experiencing the usual throat clearing/hacking for over a week. No fever or other symptoms of virus but keeping an eye on it.
ReplyDeleteYoungest son & wife returned from midwest university as well. Both are attending virtual classes in which the university system has yet to become coherent.
Otherwise - all things remain stable her in this upstate NY household.
Kindest regards- HRW