AUSTIN, Texas — Photographs from 1918 tell a grim story of a world grappling with a flu pandemic. It was called the Spanish Flu, but it’s believed to have actually originated in Kansas. Spain got the dubious honor because its press played up the flu story while other countries censored the virus news for fear of starting a panic.
In the U.S., an estimated 27 million people caught the illness and as many as 600,000 died.
The problem was made worse since many young Americans left to fight World War I, where they were often malnourished and lived in close quarters.
Doctors knew that face masks might keep the virus from spreading, and they were in great demand but there were not enough for everyone.
In Austin in 1918, the flu hit the University of Texas campus hard. Classes were canceled and the school was shut down. Women students were recruited to assist nurses to care for the sick. Statesman reporter Michael Barnes recently wrote about that and the more than 200 Austinites who died.
Edna Boone was 10 years old when the pandemic hit her hometown in Alabama.
"I was 10 but had to deliver food to the houses of the people who were sick," Boone recalled in a 2007 interview for the Alabama Department of History and Archives.
She said she would leave jars of soup her mother made on the doorsteps of the homes of neighbors who were suffering. Boone remembers that someone would come from inside the house and pick the jars up.
"It was not a pretty picture," she said.
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