Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

by Gina Kolata

His latest hypothesis, he said in an interview in August 1998, is that in the fifty years preceding the 1918 flu, the world had been through one of the most profound revolutions ever to change the course of history: the germ theory of disease. “Every eighteen months, a new pathogen was identified, and it went on for years,” Crosby noted. Each discovery drove home the message that science was conquering disease. As the drumbeat of infectious agents continued, people “heaved a great sigh of relief. At last infectious disease was not important anymore,” Crosby concludes. Then came the flu epidemic, which made a mockery of the newfound optimism. And when it ended, Crosby posits, perhaps the most comforting reaction was to forget about it, to push it to the back of humanity’s collective consciousness as quickly as possible. To “see no evil, hear no evil.”