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Chapter 11
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
Pneumonia, a disease that attacks the lungs, was the leading cause of death in the U.S. until 1936. It has often been lumped together with influenza in international health statistics, and even in the 21st century, it’s usually in the top 5 or 10 deadliest diseases.
Once again, pneumonia is a topic that demonstrates how problems in the past have continued to reverberate into the present. Though the book focuses on an influenza pandemic, Barry reiterates that public health doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that officials are always dealing with many disease threats at once.
Themes
The most common cause of pneumonia is a bacterium called pneumococcus. Scientists have been trying to make serums to cure it since at least 1892. By 1916, in the early part of World War I, one textbook still noted that no known treatment could cure pneumonia.
The history of pneumonia represents an early triumph of modern medical science, though in some ways it also highlights the limits of what science can do to combat nature.
Themes
At the Rockefeller Institute, Rufus Cole was putting most of his energy into treatment for pneumonia. He knew that finding a solution involved stimulating the body’s own defenses—the immune system. This was the principle behind all vaccines developed so far; however, the problem was that diseases like tetanus and diphtheria didn’t change much, making them easy targets, but pneumococcus was much more variable.
In this passage, Rufus Cole demonstrates what the early stages of the scientific method look like. The process starts by asking questions and looking into what is already known. From there, the scientist can proceed into trying to figure out some of the unknowns.
Themes
In 1912, Cole developed a serum that was moderately successful against one type of pneumococcus. Curing the disease was a passion for him, but it became an obsession for Oswald Avery. Avery was a scrawny man who grew up in New York City as the son of a Baptist minister. Like Welch, he never married, and by most accounts, Avery had almost no social life, devoting everything to his research.
The similarities between Avery and Welch seem to suggest that scientific research in the period either attracted a certain type of personality or perhaps even required it. Because the research was so demanding, it required investigators who could afford to give it a single-minded focus.
Themes
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Together, Avery and Cole made slow but important progress studying pneumonia. They were able to identify three fairly common strains: Type I, Type II, and Type III, as well as other less regular strains that they collectively called Type IV. These categories helped focus their efforts on developing a serum. One of the big puzzles was that certain pneumococci were lethal while others weren’t. Eventually, Avery, Cole, and their colleagues got ready to test a serum on human subjects.
One of the hallmarks of scientific advancement is learning how to name and classify things that were previously mysterious. Avery and Cole’s classifications of pneumonia represented an important step forward for better understanding the disease, which was in turn a step toward attempting to minimize the amount of suffering it caused in the world.
Themes
