It was an affair that showed how scant knowledge and real fears can be magnified in a political arena, transmogrifying into certainties that no scientist could defend and pronouncements that were based more on hype than on fact. It eventually demonstrated the unerring ability of the press to ratchet coincidences into causal relationships and spark a panic. And from its start in New Jersey to its dwindling end in the nation’s courtrooms, the story was a graphic illustration of the power of an image, the haunting memory of the 1918 flu that was rising like a specter from its grave.
