PROSPERITY, DEPRESSION, REFORM 183correspond to the largest training and cantonment
camps, for military mobilization facilitated the
epidemic.
The virus soon spread from the military bases
to the general population. In October 1918 over
20,000 stateside soldiers perished from the disease;
in Philadelphia 700 died in a single day. In New York
City, the public health commissioner staggered the
hours of schools, shops, and workplaces in order
to lower human interaction. Military officials briefly
halted the draft and quarantined soldiers, but to
little avail. Oddly, those between the ages of 20
and 40 were the most likely to die from infection,
while higher proportions of children and the elderly
managed to survive.
The rapid spread of the disease in the fall of
1918 sparked rumors that the German enemy had
intentionally contaminated American soldiers in
order to infect the home front. But the conditions of
war worsened the pandemic. Soldiers were crowded
together in military camps, then went abroad as
carriers of the virus. Equally important were the
conditions of modern life: the concentration of
Americans in urban environments—often with poor
sanitation—made it easy for the virus to spread.
Moreover, modern transportation—steamships and
railroads—gave the pathogen ongoing access to new
hosts that it needed to survive.
The pandemic took the emerging profession of
public health by surprise. Just a few years earlier,
US Army physician Walter Reed had identified the
cause of yellow fever, while advances in vaccination,
sanitation, and bacteriology had begun to bring
typhus, cholera, and typhoid under control. These
medical advances made the flu pandemic all the
more shocking. As the war came to a close, the
disease inflicted its greatest damage. Influenza
deaths peaked in October 1918, and continued
through that winter before subsiding in early 1919.