ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

“Grip Wrecks:” The Neurological Shoals of Influenza Survival, 1889-1920

• In Event: Epidemic and Illness in the Modern Era 1

English Abstract

In April 1892, the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier quoted Dr. Brockett, who asserted that “state and private insane asylums are rapidly filling up…The country is strewed [sic] with mental ‘grip wrecks.’” Survivors in the 1890s experienced a range of neurological symptoms, including terrible headaches, diffuse nerve pain and weakness, memory loss, and even a strange form of sleeping sickness some doctors called “la nona.” Similar patterns emerged after the 1918 pandemic, with “influenza headaches,” nervous prostration, weakness, and a seemingly related sleeping sickness called “encephalitis lethargica.” During the 1918 pandemic, some physicians noted similarities in neurological outcomes between the two outbreaks, but the topic remains unstudied. This study pairs my dissertation research with materials culled from the Gale Digital Scholar Lab for a grant with the American Association for the History of Medicine. To study the medical fallout from the 1889-1891 pandemic, I employed digital humanities tools (e.g., Ngram analysis) to analyze the contents of more than two million archival documents. The search revealed thousands of advertisements, articles, and medical treatises discussing the aftermath of the 1889-1891 influenza pandemic. Studying medical issues among survivors across these outbreaks revealed unexpected connections, including the regularity of long-term, post-viral health problems. Exploring these connections is vital today, when historical diseases are resurgent, new strains of influenza are emerging, and medical literature on the vagaries of Long COVID continues to expand. To adequately respond to survivors’ health needs, practitioners and scholars alike must broaden their understanding of what pandemic survival entails.

Author

• Bethany Lynn Johnson, University of North Carolina