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Doctor Remembers the 1918 Flu
When the swine flu swept the world from 1918- 1919, 20 million people died before it mysteriously tapered off.
"It was a terrible thing. A patient would be walking around, they'd turn blue and they'd be dead. They would turn black as ink," said Dr. Damian Alagia, a survivor of the swine flu epidemic of 1918 which killed about 500,000 Americans.
In a 1976 interview, Dr. Alagia said lethargy, spitting up of blood and high temperatures were common symptoms of the disease, which struck unexpectedly and lasted about two weeks. Patients either recovered or died, according to Dr. Alagia who worked at Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital during the epidemic.
The flu hit Baltimore hard for about 2 ½ months in 1918. "Patients coughing up blood and suffering from acute exhaustion began streaming into Baltimore's St. Agnes Hospital. Those who lived to reach St. Agnes were near collapse. Many died on elevators on their way to makeshift beds," according to the UPI article.
Nearly 1,000 cases showed up at St. Agnes alone. The halls were full of cots and every empty space became a temporary holding room.
People died when they got to the hospital. Many others died in the elevator on the way up to the ward. The morgue was overflowing.
Back then, there wasn't much that could be done for the flu victims.
"About all we could do was put them to bed, give them the quinine treatment, codeine, or digitalis to keep up the circulation," recalled Alagia.
As the epidemic wound down in Baltimore, Dr. Alagia came down with the flu.
"I came down with it the last of October," said Dr. Alagia." I was giving resuscitation to seminarian. He died about 2 o'clock and I was in bed by 9 p.m."
Dr. Alagia was one of the lucky ones. He recovered from the swine flu and went on to spend a total of 59 years treating patients. He began his profession at a time when "doctors did all their own lab work and physicians didn't have insulin, penicillin and other antibiotics," progressing to the age of vaccines.
At age 81, he was slowly retiring from his practice but he still retained his fascination for the field of medicine. During his career, Dr. Alagia also treated outbreaks of typhoid and sleeping sickness.
Dr. Alagia related his experience with the 1918 flu in an August 19, 1976 article which appeared in The Daily Progress [Charlottesville, VA] as the nation was preparing for a $135 million campaign to inoculate most Americans against the same dreaded influenza strain.
More on the 1918 Flu pandemic:
The Influenza - A survivor of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 describes his experience through poetry.
