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1918 influenza pandemic

In 1918, a virus spread across the planet -- unstoppable, incurable. In Baltimore, the impact was shocking. And as World War I was coming to an end, a new battle was shaping up in homes, schools and neighborhoods. By the end of October the virus had claimed more than 3,000 Baltimoreans. By spring it had killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide -- 650,000 of them Americans. Nearly a century later, the people who lived through it and the victims' families still recall their experiences with the flu.

Sun special report

The overlooked pandemic

Through the veil of nearly 90 years, Paul Schenker remembers people lining up outside any rowhouse they saw a doctor enter. Then a teenager in East Baltimore, he watched his neighbors wait anxiously to plead for a remedy, for anything that might cure the influenza. More

Preparing to battle a crisis in the future

Haunted by the knowledge that influenza killed 50 million people in 1918, scientists and public health officials continue to seek ways to head off the next great pandemic. More

Rising young Hopkins doctor loses his life

In the autumn of 1918, many of Dr. Admont Halsey Clark's colleagues were in France, tending to troops. Although commissioned as a first lieutenant in the medical reserve corps, he had heeded the U.S. surgeon general's request that he keep to his research. More

Personal histories

During the late summer of 1918, Americans were gripped by news from the European front as World War I neared its end. They didn't dream that a larger, more deadly battle would soon be fought on U.S. soil. More

'A splendid character'

Sick himself with influenza, one of Baltimore's most prominent doctors wrote a letter to the family of one of Baltimore's most promising researchers, fatally stricken as he tried to combat the 1918 influenza epidemic. More

View from Fort McHenry

Emily Raine Williams, who was born in Baltimore in the late 1870s, graduated from St. Mary's School of Nursing and became superindendent of nurses at the Fort McHenry Hospital during World War I. During the influenza pandemic, Williams wrote the following in her memoirs: More

Nuns reach out to sick

The following is an excerpt from the 1982 book, "A Century of Caring." Sister Mary Cecelia O'Sullivan wrote this passage, according to Caroline Hook, Account Executive for Bonnie Heneson Communications, the PR agency of the Sisters of Bon Secours: More

The disease that shook Baltimore

SOURCES: Sun researcher Paul McCardell contributed to this compilation. Its sources include the Baltimore Health Department; The World Almanac, 1919; The Sun; The Evening Sun; The (Baltimore) Afro-American; The Washington Post; PBS.org; Twoop.com Medical Timelines and the World Health Organization. More

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