Influenza Epidemic 1918- “Wear a mask and save your life”
NYC letter carriers. Archives ID 45499319.
Boston Red Cross workers make masks for soldiers Archives ID 45499341.
A Seattle streetcar driver refuses access to a non-masked rider. Archives ID 45499311.
NYC typist. Image caption: “Aroused by hold that disease has taken...practically every worker has muffled their faces in gauze masks as a protection against disease.” Archives ID 45499377.
Image caption: “To successfully combat the influenza which has stricken a number of our army and navy boys, a special camp has been fitted up on the ground of the Correy Hill Hospital in Brookline, Mass.” Archives ID 45499297
NYC Traffic cop in gauze mask. Archives ID 45499301.
Boston hospital nurses model mask options Archives ID 45499377.
By Dena Lombardo, Intern, Office of Public and Media Communications.
Before the Coronavirus hit, the most severe pandemic in recent history was the 1918 influenza virus, aka “the Spanish Flu.” The virus infected roughly 500 million people -- one-third of the world’s population -- and caused 50 million deaths worldwide and 675,000 in the U.S. alone. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population caught the virus, and in one year alone the average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years. The global toll was more than double the number of lives lost in World War One.
“Wear a Mask and Save Your Life” was the directive -- not recommendation -- from the Red Cross and other health organizations. Newspapers carried this slogan with the additional warning: “Doctors wear them. Those who do not wear them get sick. The man or woman or child who will not wear a mask is now a dangerous slacker.”
The New York Board of Health acknowledged that while masks were not attractive, “better be ridiculous than dead.”
Red Cross workers worked long hours to increase production of 260,000 gauze masks for wide distribution by the police to civilians and soldiers. Some Ohio Red Cross workers were so dedicated that even when their unit was temporarily closed because of the virus, they continued to produce masks in their homes.
Recognizing the shortage of medical workers, in October of 1918, Congress authorized $1 million -- equivalent to almost $19 million today -- for the Public Health Service to recruit 1,000 medical doctors and 700 registered nurses.
With no vaccine to protect against the virus and few medications to lessen the symptoms, people were urged to isolate, quarantine, practice good personal hygiene, and limit social interaction.
See related images and documents in the National Archives online exhibit The Deadly Virus: The Influenza Epidemic of 1918.