The Committee in whose hands the organization and distribution of relief was placed, testifies in this brief way to the splendid work accomplished, and the highly successful co-operative movement of the State, County, Cities and Towns, and does so, with the thought that their fellow citizens, when they shall have read of the epidemic as here set forth, will feel that they are duly bound to express personally, and publicly, whenever occasion offers, something of their willingness to give a full measure of approval to those who made sacrifices in the work so nobly done. GENERAL COMMITTEE Luzerne County Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SPANISH INFLUENZA PANDEMIC OF 1918. An account of its ravages in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and the efforts made to combat and subdue it. by OSCAR JEWELL HARVEY. Wilkes-Barré, Penn’a, January, 1920. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ─The─ Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918. By Oscar Jewell Harvey. ═══════ EARLY in September, 1918, the United States was invaded by a scourge of highly infectious and fatal disease, which spread with rapidity throughout the country. It was pandemic in its nature, and partook of many of the characteristics of influenza, grip and pneumonia. No one seemed to know much about the disease or its treatment, and medical science and public health agencies were alike unprepared to cope with it. About all that could be done at the start was to adopt and attempt to enforce drastic regulations to minimize contagion; but even in view of these regulations, and when the plague had burst forth in all its widespread malignity, the country at large seemed slow to awaken to the enormity of the peril which it faced. It certainly was a disconcerting fact that, at the very time when vast numbers of the people in widely-distributed localities had organized themselves, through the Red Cross and other well-known and efficient mediums, to fight disease and prevent suffering and death, we should be smitten with a visitation which caused more casualties and deaths among the peaceful citizens in the homeland than the deadly missiles and poisonous gases of the enemy effected among the American Expeditionary Forces overseas in the great World War. From September 9 to November 9, according to reports received by the Federal Census Bureau from forty-six large cities in the United States having a combined population of 23,000,000 souls, there was a total of 82,306 deaths attributed to the scourge. In a similar period of time, in the same communities, the normal number of deaths dues to influenza and pneumonia would have been about 4,000.