from the Buffalo Enquirer, 1919
In only one quick yr since Covid-19 used to be declared a plague, we will be able to glance again and say that fashionable drugs has allowed us the power to know the way it’s unfold and highest practices to comprise and prevent that unfold.
Repeatedly over the past three hundred and sixty five days, we’ve regarded again on the flu pandemic of 1918 for clues about coping with our present scenario – however no longer all the century-old research and science holds up.
In truth, in October 1919 – three hundred and sixty five days got rid of from the worst of the flu in Buffalo, when 218 other folks died in a two-day duration – the Buffalo Specific introduced the attention-grabbing viewpoint of a St. Catharines doctor on why the dying toll used to be so top in the community.
Dr. Fred Sheahan believed “a really perfect many had long gone to an premature finish on account of the impossibility to get a provide of alcohol.”
The Ontario Temperance Act banned the sale of alcohol within the province from 1916-1927. Sheahan blamed the legislation for issues of the flu and existence generally for Ontarians.
“There will have to be a way through which respectable other folks may protected liquor,” the Specific reported him as announcing – particularly for the ones affected by flu.
“Regarding the flu epidemic, Sheahan mentioned that it have been discovered that if sufferers can also be made to perspire, they did smartly from then on. Liquor gave the impression the most productive treatment.”
