The "Spanish" Flu and the Pandemic Imaginary
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3406706 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Honigsbaum (0000-0002-1891-8763, City, University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 114 |
| Issue | S1 |
| Pages | S143-S161 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Isis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/726984 |
| OpenAlex | W4387038307 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
Few diseases are extensively diffused as influenza, but though flu pandemics occur with regularity throughout history the bibliography is dominated by the 1918-1919 “Spanish influenza” pandemic. This review argues that this preoccupation is largely a product of historical epidemiology and retrospective statistical analysis which has made the Spanish flu the reference point against which other modern respiratory pandemics, including COVID-19, are measured—hence the Spanish flu’s importance for the 21st century pandemic imaginary. The review identifies six distinct thematic areas within the historiography of H1N1 Spanish influenza. These include medical writings which attempt to read the history of the Spanish flu backwards to “learn” public health “lessons” for the mitigation of future pandemics, and ecological writings in which influenza is seen as the paradigm of an emerging infectious disease and a model for the genesis of epidemics and pandemics from zoonotic reservoirs. Scholarship since 1997 also reflects a growing interdisciplinarity, one in which bioarchaeology and molecular dating techniques have furnished new insights into the history of influenza and the Spanish flu’s evolutionary origins, bringing the life sciences into closer dialogue with the medical and environmental humanities. These scientific insights have spurred both academic and popular writings on the Spanish flu, rendering its characterization as the “forgotten pandemic” something of an oxymoron. Indeed, if anything, the centenary of the Spanish flu in 2018 and the 2019-2023 COVID pandemic have provoked renewed interest in several of the themes identified in this review: including, most particularly, the writings of social historians of medicine, cultural historians, and disease demographers
Archaeology · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Disease · Environmental ethics · Geography · Historiography · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Pandemic · Political science · Public health · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · The Imaginary · History · Influenza Virus Research Studies · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology
The Spanish Flu
Explaining epidemics and other studies in the history of medicine
Biosecurity Interventions
Updating the Accounts
Introduction
The Russian Influenza in the United Kingdom, 1889–1894
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919 in the British Caribbean
The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 and the Adivasis of Western India
The Recent Wave of 'Spanish' Flu Historiography
The Great Dread
Global Explanations Versus Local Interpretations
Death and the Modern Empire
In a Time of Plague
The influenza epidemic of 1918–19 in Western Samoa
The 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic— The Indian Experience
A New ‘Imperial Disease’
Natural Histories of Infectious Disease
An Uncertain Risk
Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America
Avian flu
The patient's view
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |