Morbid Fact Du Jour for December 16, 2014

Today’s Infectious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

During the Influenza epidemic of 1918, more than 25% of the U.S. population became ill; 40% of the Navy got the flu and 36% of the Army; and estimates range from 20 million to more than 100 million dead worldwide.  The exact count is unknown because many places that were bludgeoned by the flu did not keep mortality statistics, and even in countries such as the United States, efforts at tabulating flu deaths were complicated by the fact that there was no definitive test in those days to show that a person actually had the flu. But still, the low end of the mortality estimates is stunning. In comparison, AIDS had killed 11.7 million people through 1997. World War I was responsible for 9.2 million combat deaths and around 15 million total deaths. World War II for 15.9 million combat deaths. Historian Alfred W. Crosby remarks that whatever the exact number felled by the 1918 flu, one thing is indisputable: the virus “killed more humans than any other disease in a period of similar duration in the history of the world.”

Culled from: Flu

A 1918 flu poster.  I’d love a framed version…

Garretdom!

Here’s another old newspaper excerpt.  Oh, such DRAMA!

Chico Courant (Chico, California)
Saturday, November 25, 1865

DIED. – Far away from home, relatives and friends among strangers, with no one to shed a parting tear, with strangers to smooth his dying pillow, another unfortunate Californian passed on to the silent land, the land of forgetfulness, the land of the departed.  Joseph Coburn, a private in Company II, Ninth U.S. Regular Infantry, on the march to Summit Lake, was taken sick, was left at the Chico Hotel in this place, being unable to proceed farther; received all the care and attention that could be bestowed; lingered until Friday night, the 18th inst., when he died.  He was about 22 year old, enlisted in San Francisco about one year ago; not being in his right mind the most of the time, his native place could not be learned, but from expressions made use of in his wandering moods, it is supposed he was a native of New York, residing in the vicinity of Niagara Falls.  An anxious waiting mother, there may be, who for years will listen for the returning footsteps of the absent boy, little dreaming that he sleeps the long sleep of death in the Valley of the Sacramento.  There may be sisters and brothers who will gather around the old hearthstone at home, and when the storm beats without, and the tempest howls around the old homestead, wonder where the absent one is, and why he does not return.  the storms may beat around his dwelling and he heeds them not; heat and cold, summer and winter are all the same to him now.  When one dies thus alone in a strange land and among strangers, we think of the many notices which appear almost daily of “INFORMATION WANTED,” some friend inquiring for the lost one.  How many have laid down to die on hill and plain, mountain and valley, gulch and ravine, all over the Pacific Coast with nothing to mark the spot where they sleep, and not a word concerning their fate ever transmitted to relatives or friends.  What waifs we are, floating on the ocean of time, engulfed to-day and forgotten to-morrow.

From the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair

More Pestilent Death can be perused at Garretdom!

Morbid Trinket Du Jour!

Planning a party?  Then why not cover your table with a bloody mess of a table cloth?  If I had any friends for which I could throw a party, I would!