182 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
The outbreak of Spanish flu in 1918 was the worst
pandemic in modern history: it infected nearly a third
of the world’s population and killed far more than the
fighting in World War I. In the United States, at least
half a million people died from the flu, a number
exceeding American casualties of all twentieth-
century wars combined. The most terrifying aspect
of the disease was the speed of infection, which
defied any effort either to contain it or to locate its
source. This unassuming map was an attempt by the
US Public Health Service to track the disease as it
ravaged the country.
Years later, medical researchers traced the earliest
cases of infection to Camp Funston in Kansas, where
soldiers reported to the camp hospital with fever,
headache, and backache. Within a few days most of
them had returned to duty. Though a few developed
pneumonia, the entire outbreak seemed to subside
within two weeks. Other bases reported similar
episodes soon after, but military and public health
officials took little notice of this. After Congress
declared war on Germany in April, the military
created thirty-two camps to house and train up to
45,000 men each. These “cities” brought together
large numbers of men from around the country who
transmitted the contagion and then carried it to
Europe as they were deployed. By May, American and
French troops on the front had been infected.
A second and far deadlier wave of the influenza
virus returned to the United States that summer,
when a few soldiers fell ill upon arriving at Boston’s
Commonwealth Pier. Eight new cases were reported
within a day, and sixty-eight the day after that. On
September 20, the army counted 9,313 cases of
influenza in its ranks; three days later there were
20,000. By September 26, the disease had spread
to coastal bases at Puget Sound, San Francisco,
Louisiana, and even the Great Lakes. A few days later
it had reached twenty military camps in the interior
of the country. Most of the isolated spots of early
outbreak marked on the map (September 14–28)
DEADLIER THAN WAR
US Public Health Service,
“Chronological Map of the Influenza
Epidemic of 1918,” 1919