Keystone of an epidemic: Pennsylvania's urban experience during the 1918--1920 influenza epidemic.
详细信息
文摘
The historiography of the 1918--1919 influenza pandemic consists mainly of broad studies that hold an international or national perspective. From such a vantage, the nature of the virus that caused the epidemic and its massive loss of life have led historians to believe that communities could offer no meaningful resistance in the face of the virus' fury. The present study offers a new perspective, one which compares the histories of four cities -- Philadelphia, Bethlehem, Allentown, and Pittsburgh - in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the generation before the epidemic, as well as the response each city mustered to combat unprecedented numbers of sick and dead. While most studies consider only the First World War and immediate circumstances in their contextualization of the epidemic, this study argues that action and inaction during the progressive era helped define each city's probability of effectively combating the epidemic through long-term environmental reform and construction of effective health boards, as well as swift and effectively-ministered emergency measures.