The Spanish flu was a pandemic that began in 1918. It is estimated that in two years it caused the death of more than 50 million people worldwide, although the exact number is unknown. Its first case was registered in March of that year at the Fort Riley military base, in the state of Kansas (United States), not in Spain. Why is it known by this name then?
The magazine Perspectivas de Salud reviews the evolution of this flu epidemic. He points out that it received its name due to censorship during the First World War. The countries involved in the conflict concealed that they had suffered heavy losses due to the disease, so that the information would not reach their enemies.
In contrast, Spain was not involved in the war, so the country’s newspapers openly shared that many citizens had died in 1918 from the flu. This was a topic that was not discussed in other European territories, which were focused on the war. The Spanish media baptized the flu as the soldier of Naples for a song.
Spain was the first country to echo the magnitude of the pandemic. The data jumped to the international press. “After informing the correspondent of The Times in Madrid, the term of Spanish flu would spread to the rest of the world from the summer of 1918,” says Gaceta Médica.
After the first case of influenza recorded in Fort Riley in 1918, in just one week, 522 men with the same symptoms were admitted to the hospital in that location. Other similar outbreaks appeared in different parts of the United States. Soldiers at Fort Riley incubated the virus during their trip to France, where it spread to all troops.
The disease received different names at first. The Americans called it three-day fever or the purple death. The French talked about purulent bronchitis. The Italians referred to it as sand fly fever and the Filipinos coined the term trancazo. Many countries blamed others. The Germans gave him Flanders fever. In Poland there was talk about Bolshevik flu, in Senegal about Brazilian flu and in Brazil about German flu.
