MedicineHistory

Plagues A Personal Time Capsule

C. Clausen

2020QUEENS QUARTERLY

tlooto Summary

The 1918 epidemic was especially dangerous to the young and healthy, and people in earlier times had fewer ways to fend it off, but that did not make them less subject to grief.

Abstract

Unlike our new coronavirus and most strains of flu, the 1918 epidemic was especially dangerous to the young and healthy My great-aunt Caroline was one of its estimated 675,000 American fatalities A 25-year-old mother of three infant daughters, she lived, like many coronavirus victims a century later, in New York City We think of people in earlier times as more stoical about death than we are, but the fact that they had fewer ways to fend it off did not make them less subject to grief

Citation format

CLAUSEN, C. Plagues a personal time capsule. QUEENS QUARTERLY, 2020, 127: 172–181.