In March 1919 a senior Red Cross official advised district officers to help wherever possible on an emergency basis, because “the influenza epidemic not only caused the deaths of some six hundred thousand people, but it also left a trail of lowered vitality . . . nervous breakdown, and other sequella [sic] which now threaten thousands of people. It left widows and orphans and dependent old people. It has reduced many of these families to poverty and acute distress. This havoc is wide spread, reaching all parts of the United States and all classes of people.” Months after “recovering”
