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Chapter 17
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
While the influenza outbreak at Camp Devens was a surprise, subsequent outbreaks at military bases were not a surprise. After Devens, Gorgas immediately warned other camps around the country.
Though Barry criticizes the government and military for lack of preparedness at Camp Devens, he reserves even stronger criticism for the leaders at camps that were affected later, since they had the clear example of Camp Devens to guide their actions and still refused to make necessary preparations until it was too late.
Themes
Joe Capps, a friend of Cole, discovered that making patients with respiratory disease wear gauze masks could greatly decrease the risk of infection spreading. He also recommended reducing crowding.
These recommendations for reducing the spread of a respiratory disease are still used today, showing how advanced some medicine was, even as far back as 1918.
Themes
In August 1918, Colonel Charles Hagadorn took command of Camp Grant. The camp was already overcrowded, and Hagadorn wanted to add even more people. He believed the disease could be controlled, and while he made some concessions to the scientists and health officials advising him (reducing how much men could travel), he ultimately went ahead with his orders.
While Hagadorn wasn’t totally opposed to virus control measures, in some ways, his half-measures were just as bad as Wilmer Krusen’s recklessness in Philadelphia. The events at Camp Grant showed the danger of trying to adapt or compromise on science as Hagadorn did.
Themes
Soon, the first cases of influenza were discovered at Camp Grant. Hagadorn ordered a quarantine for the sick soldiers, but it was too late, and the epidemic began spreading through the whole camp. Training for war stopped as the soldiers struggled just to stay alive.
Barry shows how even for those who considered the war top priority, it was bad to ignore potential epidemics, since they inevitably shut down war preparation activities like training, to say nothing of the soldiers who actually died.
Themes
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The same day that the first Camp Grant soldier died, 3,108 troops from the camp boarded a train headed for Camp Hancock in Georgia. Men on the tightly packed train soon got sick, and eventually over 10 percent of them died.
Hagadorn’s bad decisions were hard to reverse—had he taken the advice of his advisors more seriously, those soldiers might not have been shipped out and might not have helped spread the disease so widely from the camp.
Themes
Back at Camp Grant, Hagadorn had ceded most of the camp’s operations to medical experts. The death toll continued to rise, with many of the victims being younger. Hagadorn ordered his sergeant to leave the building and have all headquarters personnel stand for inspection outside. The sergeant didn’t understand but followed the order. Eventually, they heard the pistol shot of Hagadorn killing himself.
Hagadorn’s decision to cede the camp to medical experts suggested that he was perhaps not as selfish or corrupt as men like Krusen were. The tragic end to his story for all involved suggests that some of the worst devastation of the influenza pandemic may have come from well-intentioned but ultimately ill-informed leadership decisions.
Themes
