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Chapter 1
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
At his 80th birthday celebration in 1930, William Henry Welch was perhaps the most influential scientist in the world, though nothing in his youth ever suggested he would be remarkable. By traditional metrics of academic success, like papers published, he wasn’t exceptional by any means. Still, he led a movement that created one of the greatest scientific medical enterprises of all time, and for that, his peers all recognized him.
Welch’s situation prompts questions about what success actually means in the sciences. The fact that Welch wasn’t particularly successful by many metrics of academic or professional achievement suggests not that Welch was incompetent, but that traditional methods of measuring scientific achievement might be too limited to really quantify a person’s impact on science.
Themes
Born in Connecticut in 1850, Welch was exposed to medicine early through his father, uncles, great-uncle, and grandfather, who were all physicians. Welch himself initially had no desire to follow in their footsteps. At age 15, he committed himself to God, and soon after he attended Yale, where he graduated third in his class and was part of the Skull and Bones secret society. Despite his devotion to science, Welch rejected the personal God favored by some Transcendentalists and Unitarians, instead focusing on the truth revealed in scripture.
The Transcendentalists and the Unitarians were both part of religious and philosophical movements that proposed that everything in the universe is connected. This idea appealed to many scientists in the 1800s, and Welch’s rejection of this somewhat new idea suggests that he was more traditional than some of his contemporaries, particularly on the issue of religion.
Themes
Eventually, Welch went to medical school at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City (which will later become part of Columbia University). One of the unique elements about the school at the time was that it allowed students to examine cadavers.
The book again mentions cadavers because they represent the more rigorous, hands-on approach of modern medicine, as opposed to the more abstract, reason-based medicine of Hippocrates and his followers.
Themes
Welch graduated medical school and began building a reputation for himself, though big gaps in his knowledge remained. Like many American physicians seeking to learn more, Welch studied abroad in Europe, specifically Germany, where a lot of the best medical science of the era was being done.
Though Welch was intelligent from the start, even he struggled with the American medical education system’s limitations. His experience of going to Germany reflects is one that many of his colleagues had as well.
Themes
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While many physicians who came to Germany wanted to learn how to better treat patients, Welch was particularly interested in learning lab science. His beliefs shifted, and he became a major proponent of Darwinism, believing it aligned with his faith.
In many cases, Darwinism is a symbol for the beginning of modern science, and Welch’s embrace of it shows that he was increasingly engaging with what would become modern science.
Themes
In 1877, Daniel Gilman at Johns Hopkins began making plans to assemble the greatest medical school faculty in the United States, capable of rivaling even European schools. He entrusted the search to a man named Dr. John Shaw Billings. A key pillar of their plan was a library, including a collection of specimens. Billings built a comprehensive library that eventually grew into today’s National Library of Medicine.
Billings’s search for a competent staff suggests that groups and institutions are important, but also that institutions tend to be made up of individuals who have their own important skills and unique life stories that they bring with them.
Themes
Billings, while traveling abroad to find candidates for Hopkins faculty, first met Welch in a German beer hall. He knew Welch only by reputation, but after speaking with him, he decided Welch should be one of the first people they hired.
The meeting between Billings and Welch emphasizes the social nature of how science was conducted. In this sense, reputation and connections played a role in research.
Themes
Hopkins was slow to start, however, beginning as just a graduate school with no undergraduates or medical school. Meanwhile, in 1878, Welch came back to New York with the intent of teaching a course of laboratory science, but he had a hard time finding a willing institution and began to despair. Eventually he started teaching at Bellevue, a not very prestigious medical school with almost nothing in the way of laboratory equipment.
This passage highlights how change often happens slowly, particularly when it’s a change as large as the medical revolution that would eventually happen at Johns Hopkins University. Even Welch, who had a global reputation at this point, struggled at first to get the financial and institutional backing he needed to prosper.
Themes
