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Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Great Influenza, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Leadership and Crisis
Truth, Free Press, and Propaganda
Science vs. Nature
Education, Research, and Institutions
Summary
Analysis
As 1917 went on, President Wilson began urging the nation toward total war, and this included the medical profession. One prominent medical journal suggested killing wounded enemies discovered in trenches, although Gorgas disagreed.
By late 1917, the U.S. army had millions of soldiers, and young men from around the country were packed together in close quarters. Gorgas feared what a mass epidemic could do. By this point, medical science had managed to defeat or severely diminish diseases like typhoid and tetanus, so it seemed like it had the potential to go even further. Gorgas created a special unit in the camp for preventing infectious disease. Gorgas’s colleagues warned about a potential pneumonia outbreak, but his superiors ignored the warning.
Though pandemics often seem to be events that come out of nowhere, here Barry shows that in fact, there were plenty of physicians like Gorgas who were preparing for the possibility of a pandemic. While it is perhaps easier to identify such figures in hindsight, Barry argued previously that there was ample past precedent for epidemics during wars, meaning Gorgas isn’t particularly radical, just practical.
Themes
The winter of 1917–1918 was the coldest ever recorded east of the Rocky Mountains. Because of the cramped conditions and cold winter, a measles outbreak spread through the army camps, often traveling from camp to camp as infected soldiers moved.
The fact that the measles outbreak occurred at the same time as the coldest winter ever recorded in the region seems to suggest that forces of nature work in tandem and that the measles is a force as powerful as any weather.
Themes
Scientists didn’t have a vaccine or a cure for measles yet. When the disease became deadly, it was usually because of secondary infections, like pneumonia. Young soldiers died at 12 times the rate of civilians. Wilson’s Republican rivals used the measles fiasco to attack him, and so Gorgas was forced to give testimony.
As this passage shows, epidemics aren’t just a medical issue but also a political one. They can spur positive political outcomes (reform, funding for research) but also negative ones (partisanship, repression). Gorgas’s position suggests that public health officials must not only be experts in medicine, but must be able to navigate politics as well.
Themes
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Gorgas hoped his testimony would make the army devote more resources to protecting troops. In some ways it did, though some of his peers shunned him for speaking out. Meanwhile, at one of the hardest hit camps, Welch learned that the mortality rate for soldiers who got pneumonia after measles was 30 percent.
The reaction to Gorgas illustrates a common problem that many reformers face: saying nothing allows the status quo to continue, but speaking up about problems often draws a backlash. The juxtaposition of Gorgas’s mixed reception with the startling 30 percent mortality rate that Welch witnesses suggests that while public perception is important, ultimately there are some hard facts that can’t be changed.
Themes
