Abstract
On May 21, 1918, El Liberal published a scant article titled “Can One Live? The Fashionable Illness.” Likely the first account in Spain of the Spanish flu, it begins: “For several days, Madrid has been affected by an epidemic, which fortunately is mild; but which, from what it appears, intends to kill doctors from overwork.”1 As a sign of how mild the epidemic was, patients were confined to bed for all of three or four days. Curiously, it seemed to be doing most of its damage in theaters. The Reina Victoria, Novedades, and Cómico theaters were all besieged by the “flu fever—that’s what they call it … which causes more annoyances for impresarios than ‘typhus,’ the most dreaded disease of box offices. If this keeps going, there will be no one who can sing that song about the ‘Naples Soldier.’”2 The following day, El Sol and ABC published their first stories about the epidemic: “What is the Cause? An Epidemic in Madrid” and “Benign Epidemic. The Sickbay in Madrid,” respectively.
It’s only the flu, sure. But the name doesn’t make the thing.
—El Liberal
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Notes
Beatriz Echeverri Dávila, “Spanish Influenza Seen from Spain,” in The Spanish Influenza Pandemic 1918–1919: New Perspectives, ed. Howard Phillips and David Killingray (New York: Routledge, 2003), 176–77.
Edward Said, “Beginnings,” Narrative Dynamics: Essay on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames, ed. Brian Richardson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002), 265.
Cheryl Mattingly, Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 157.
“La fiebre de los tres días,” El Sol, May 28, 1918. Although World War I proved a boon for certain Spanish exports, it also led to a sharp increase in inflation: “Rapid growth fuelled severe inflation and by 1920 the price of basic necessities was as much as 120 per cent higher than in 1914.” Sebastian Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898–1923 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 212.
Mariano de Cavia, “Contra la epidemia. ¡Se suplica el velo!” El Sol, October 24, 1918.
The scientific debate revolving around the etiological agent was quite nuanced. For an overview of the debate, see Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, 264–90. A more popular treatment is Barry, The Great Influenza, 266–80, 414–27. On the debate in other countries, see (for Brazil) Liane Maria Bertucci, “‘Spanish’ Flu in Brazil: Searching for Causes during the Epidemic Horror,” in The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919: Emerging Perspectives from the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas, ed. María-Isabel Porras-Gallo and Ryan A. Davis (Rochester University Press, forthcoming) and Wilfried Witte, “The Plague That was Not Allowed to Happen,” 52–54. In Spain, scientists advanced four distinct hypotheses: Pfeiffer’s bacillus, bacterial association (i.e., the mixture of streptococci, pneumococci, meningococci, etc.), a previously unidentified bacterium, and a “filterable virus.” See Porras-Gallo, “Una ciudad en crisis”: La epidemia de gripe de 1918–1919 en Madrid) (PhD Diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1994), 311–22.
Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 72.
Santiago Ramóny Cajal, Vacation Stories: Five Science Fiction Tales, trans. Laura Otis (University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL, 2006), 82.
Ángel Sánchez de Val, La Septicemia gripal (Sagasta: Casa Editora, 1919), 21. Honigsbaum recounts how British medical authorities viewed the Spanish flu as sui generis, “a product of the stress and strains of war.”
Mark Honigsbaum, Living with Enza: The Forgotten Story of Britain and the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918 (London: Macmillan, 2009), 62.
His follow-up research seemed to verify his original findings. See Angel Sánchez Gozalbo, “Contribución al estudio de la grippe de 1918 en la provincia de Castellón: Memoria presentada á la Universidad Central” (Castellón, Spain: Hijos de J. Armengot, 1919), 19.
H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 60.
On the shortcomings of public health infrastructures in countries other than Spain, see Mridula Ramanna, “Coping with the Influenza Pandemic: The Bombay Experience,” in The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919: New Perspectives, ed. Howard Phillips and David Killingray (New York: Routledge, 2003), 87, 97; Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic, 19, 49; Phillips, “ Black October,” xix, 101, 106; and
Esyllt W. Jones, Influenza 1918: Disease, Death, and Struggle in Winnipeg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 39.
On the role of experts in educating Spaniards about prophylaxis of the flu, see María-Isabel Porras-Gallo, “Ateniéndose a los consejos de los expertos: Los madrileños frente a la gripe durante las epidemias de 1889–90 y de 1918–19,” in De la responsabilidad individual a la culpabilización de la víctima, ed. Luis Montiel and María-Isabel Porras-Gallo (Aranjuez, Spain: Ediciones Doce Calles, 1997).
D. Florencio Porpeta y Llorente, Cartilla sanitaria contra la Grippe o Influenza (Madrid: Núñez Samper, 1918), 16. Italics in the original.
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© 2013 Ryan A. Davis
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Davis, R.A. (2013). A Mundane Mystery: Framing the Flu in the First Epidemic Wave. In: The Spanish Flu. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339218_2
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