Research Guides: Common Read: Library Sources for the Great Influenza: Medicine

Web Resources, including Databases

History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
Collections include archives & modern manuscripts, films & videos, prints & photographs, and rare books & journals.
National Library of Medicine, Digital Collections
Explore texts, images, videos, and maps.
IndexCat
List items in the Library of the Surgeon-General’s Office, U.S. Army. It contains material dated from the 1400s through 1950. Keep in mind that IndexCat reflects the collection of a single library and is not a bibliography of all existing material.

PubMed Medline
Provides free access to over 30 million journal article citations from MEDLINE and additional life science journals.

MedlinePlus
Provides information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language that patients, their families, and their friends can understand. The site is a service of the National Library of Medicine.

History of Medicine & Hawaii

Exhibits

Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness
An online exhibit from the National Library of Medicine that incorporates images and interviews with Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians.
A Voyage to Health
An online version of a traveling exhibit about Polynesian voyaging and how it supported a cultural renaissance for Native Hawaiians

Lecture

Hokulea and Native Hawaiian Health
Transcript of a lecture given by Nainoa Thompson at the National Library of Medicine on May 23, 2016

Selected Books (and a Journal) Cited in The Great Influenza

America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 by Alfred W. Crosby Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide claiming over 25 million lives, more people than perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-striken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event.
Call Number: RC150.1 .C76 1989
ISBN: 9780521385473
Publication Date: 1990
Influenza: The Last Great Plague: An Unfinished Story of Discovery by W. I. B. Beveridge
Call Number: RC150 .B4 1977
ISBN: 0882021184
Publication Date: 1977
Influenza in America, 1918-1976: History, Science, and Politics by June E. Osborn (Editor)
Call Number: RA644.I6 H57
ISBN: 9780882021768
Publication Date: 1977
Physician To the World: The life of General William C. Gorgas. by John M. Gibson
Call Number: RA424.5.G6 G5
Publication Date: 1950
The Plague of the Spanish Lady: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 by Richard Collier
Call Number: Pacific RC150.4 .C64 1974b
ISBN: 9780333138649
Publication Date: 1974

Public Health Reports
1878-Present (12 month embargo)
Published by the U.S. Public Health Service, this journal focuses on communicable disease outbreaks occurring around the world.

Other Books of Possible Interest

Flu: The story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It by Gina Kolata The fascinating, true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.
Call Number: RC150.4 .K64 1999
ISBN: 9780374157067
Publication Date: 1999
Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History by Catharine Arnold Before AIDS or Ebola, there was the Spanish Flu -- Catharine Arnold's gripping narrative,Pandemic 1918,marks the 100th anniversary of an epidemic that altered world history. In January 1918, as World War I raged on, a new and terrifying virus began to spread across the globe. In three successive waves, from 1918 to 1919, influenza killed more than 50 million people. German soldiers termed itBlitzkatarrh, British soldiers referred to it asFlanders Grippe, but world-wide, the pandemic gained the notorious title of "Spanish Flu". Nowhere on earth escaped: the United States recorded 550,000 deaths (five times its total military fatalities in the war) while European deaths totaled over two million. Amid the war, some governments suppressed news of the outbreak. Even as entire battalions were decimated, with both the Allies and the Germans suffering massive casualties, the details of many servicemen's deaths were hidden to protect public morale. Meanwhile, civilian families were being struck down in their homes. The City of Philadelphia ran out of gravediggers and coffins, and mass burial trenches had to be excavated with steam shovels. Spanish flu conjured up the specter of the BlackDeath of 1348 and the great plague of 1665, while the medical profession, shattered after five terrible years of conflict, lacked the resources to contain and defeat this new enemy. Through primary and archival sources, historian Catharine Arnold gives readers the first truly global account of the terrible epidemic.
Call Number: RC150.4 .A75 2018
ISBN: 9781250139436
Publication Date: 2018
The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: Perspectives from the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas by María-Isabel Porras-Gallo (Editor); Ryan A. Davis (Editor) Situating the Iberian Peninsula as the key point of connection between Europe and the Americas, both epidemiologically and discursively, The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 sheds new light on what the World Health Organization described as "the single most devastating infectious disease outbreak ever recorded." The essays in this volume elucidate specific aspects of the pandemic that have received minimal attention until now, including social control, gender, class, religion, national identity, and military medicine's reactions to the pandemic and relationship with civilian medicine. While World War I, as the authors point out, is the context for these discussions, the experiences of 1918-19 remain persistently relevant to contemporary life, particularly in view of events such as the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic and the Ebola outbreak of 2014. Contributors: Catherine Belling, Josep Bernabeu-Mestre, Liane Maria Bertucci, Ryan A. Davis, Esteban Domingo, Magda Fahrni, Hernán Feldman, Pilar León-Sanz, Maria Luísa Lima, Maria de Fátima Nunes, Mercedes Pascual Artiaga, María-Isabel Porras-Gallo, Anny Jackeline Torres Silveira, José Manuel Sobral, Paulo Silveira e Sousa, Christiane Maria Cruz de Souza. María-Isabel Porras-Gallo is professor of history of science in the Medical Faculty of Ciudad Real at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Ryan A. Davis is assistant professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University.ar León-Sanz, Maria Luísa Lima, Maria de Fátima Nunes, Mercedes Pascual Artiaga, María-Isabel Porras-Gallo, Anny Jackeline Torres Silveira, José Manuel Sobral, Paulo Silveira e Sousa, Christiane Maria Cruz de Souza. María-Isabel Porras-Gallo is professor of history of science in the Medical Faculty of Ciudad Real at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Ryan A. Davis is assistant professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University. Sousa, Christiane Maria Cruz de Souza. María-Isabel Porras-Gallo is professor of history of science in the Medical Faculty of Ciudad Real at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Ryan A. Davis is assistant professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University.
Call Number: An e-book
ISBN: 1580464963
Publication Date: 2014