San Francisco was spared during the first wave of influenza in the spring of 1918. But as the second wave took its toll on eastern cities, the city prepared for a possible onslaught.
A doctor stationed at Camp Devens, a military base near Boston, writes to a fellow physician of the conditions to be found there as influenza was making its presence felt.
As a doctor during the Spanish-American War, Vaughan witnessed the devastating effects of typhoid. But that paled in comparison to the horrible death brought on by influenza in 1918.
Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, Rupert Blue was in command of health officers and quarantine stations during the 1918 flu epidemic.
When influenza began to cut its deadly path across the U.S. in the autumn of 1918, it did so with such speed and fatal efficiency that some believed sinister forces were at work.
