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In 1918, the world took on versus a lethal opponent: the Spanish Influenza, saw today as the most serious pandemic in current history. It infected an approximated 500 million people worldwide and eliminated approximately 50 million.
Just over 100 years later, the world is fighting a pandemic again as the coronavirus spreads. While things have greatly changed in terms of healthcare, technology and culture, some things are strangely similar.
In Tennessee, the health problem, typically described as “grip” or “grippe” in papers at the time, appears to have actually come barreling through Nashville in the fall of1918 In just four months, a Nashville physician estimated that 8,000 Tennesseans had died since of flu issues.
While newspapers focused greatly on World War I and efforts to assist soldiers who were battling abroad, stories about the Spanish Influenza pushed into the narrative as the lethal virus crept into towns and cities across the country.
While “social distancing” wasn’t a term used in 1918, it was certainly being practiced and motivated.
Companies shuttered, churches closed and extra attention to hygiene was encouraged.
Noise familiar?
Faith leaders supported church closures
Faith leaders throughout Nashville adopted a resolution to close houses of worship in October 1918, Nashville Banner archives reveal.
” It was thought about best to suspend all church services as a precautionary measure against an additional spread of the feared condition,” reporters wrote at the time.
Approximately 92 churches throughout Nashville closed at the urging of the city health department, and with little protest. One pastor composed in The Tennessean that although the closures came at a time when people greatly counted on their faith, it was a required measure.
Many churches have taken a comparable stance today in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, stopping services and transitioning to remote praise to protect their congregations.
But some pastors and faith leaders have dissented.
In Harris County, Texas, a group of pastors have actually submitted a suit alleging that their federal rights have been violated due to federal government disturbance.
Dale Walker, who is president of the Tennessee Pastors Network, has publicly shared on Facebook his aggravation with Gov. Expense Lee, who in March said that churches that were providing in-person services were “running the risk of people’s lives.”
Walker didn’t agree, comparing the suppressing of in-person praise services to “Huge Sibling” on Facebook and grumbling on WZTV that “wicked alcohol shops” were still open during the pandemic.
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Possible sites consist of medical facilities in backwoods, like Ducktown, and even Music City Center in downtown Nashville.
Casts and ‘cures’ peddled to masses
When a crisis strikes, individuals marketing magic cures make certain to follow.
At a time when you might buy cocaine and opium from advertisements in newspapers, other casts and drugs were pitched as cures for the Spanish Influenza: scotch, laxatives, homemade cough syrups, Vick’s VapoRub and cod liver oil.
When $50,000 worth of unlawful whiskey was taken in Tennessee, worth nearly $1 million today, a Nashville judge asked for the confiscated alcohol be sent to close-by medical facilities since popular local medical professionals spoke of its positive impact on influenza patients.
” The most distinguished doctors of our city and county have written me that whisky is the most successful technique of combatting (the Spanish Influenza),” Judge J.D.B. DeBow wrote at the time, according to Nashville Banner archives.
While the coronavirus sweeps the globe and individuals are scrambling to get the last plan of toilet paper, fraudsters have actually turned up throughout the country trying to cash in on the COVID-19 panic.
President Donald Trump has consistently pushed the concept that hydroxychloroquine, a substance abuse to treat malaria, could be a “game changer” in the race versus the coronavirus. Studies taking a look at the drug’s ability to deal with the infection have tripled given that he started talking about the medication.
A disgraced Tennessee physician who lost his license 12 years earlier was discovered to be behind a suspicious yellow truck marketing coronavirus screening. A cops report called it “a most likely scam.”
Reach Brinley Hineman at bhineman@gannett.com, at 615-278-5164 and on Twitter @brinleyhineman.
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