The 1889–1890 pandemic, often referred to as the "Asiatic flu"[1] or "Russian flu", was a worldwide respiratory viral pandemic. It was the last great pandemic of the 19th century, and is among the deadliest pandemics in history.[2][3] The pandemic killed about 1 million people out of a world population of about 1.5 billion (0.067% of population).[4][5] The most reported effects of the pandemic took place from October 1889 to December 1890, with recurrences in March to June 1891, November 1891 to June 1892, the northern winter of 1893–1894, and early 1895.
Although contemporaries described the pandemic as influenza and twentieth-century scholars identified several influenza strains as the possible pathogen, some more recent authors suggest that it may have been caused by human coronavirus OC43.[6][7][8][9]
| Suspected cases‡ | 300–900 million (estimate) |
|---|---|
Deaths | 1 million (estimate) |
Medical treatment[edit]
There was no standard treatment of flu; quinine and phenazone were used, as well as small doses of strychnine and larger ones of whisky and brandy, and as cheaper treatments linseed, salt and warm water, and glycerin.[11] Many people also thought that fasting would 'starve' the fever, based on the belief that the body would not produce as much heat with less food; this was in fact poor medical advice.[11] Furthermore, many doctors still believed in the miasma theory of disease rather than infectious spread;[11] for example, notable professors of the University of Vienna, Hermann Nothnagel and Otto Kahler considered that the disease was not contagious.[11]
Public health[edit]
US public health departments did little prevention in advance, even though they knew through transoceanic telegraph cable reports, that the Russian influenza was on its way.[16]
A result of the Asiatic flu in Malta is that influenza became for the first time a compulsorily notifiable illness.[17]
Identification of virus responsible[edit]
Influenza virus[edit]
Researchers have tried for many years to identify the subtypes of Influenza A responsible for the 1889–1890, 1898–1900 and 1918 epidemics.[18][19][20] Initially, this work was primarily based on "seroarcheology"—the detection of antibodies to influenza infection in the sera of elderly people—and it was thought that the 1889–1890 pandemic was caused by Influenza A subtype H2, the 1898–1900 epidemic by subtype H3, and the 1918 pandemic by subtype H1.[21] With the confirmation of H1N1 as the cause of the 1918 flu pandemic following identification of H1N1 antibodies in exhumed corpses,[21] reanalysis of seroarcheological data suggested Influenza A subtype H3 (possibly the H3N8subtype) as a more likely cause for the 1889–1890 pandemic.[10][21][22]
[edit]
After the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, virologists started sequencing human and animal coronaviruses. A comparison of two virus strains in the Betacoronavirus 1 species, bovine coronavirus and human coronavirus OC43, indicated that they had a most recent common ancestor in the late 19th century, with several methods yielding most probable dates around 1890. Authors speculated that an introduction of the former strain to the human population, rather than influenza, might have caused the 1889 epidemic.[19]
In 2020, Danish researchers Lone Simonsen and Anders Gorm Pedersen noted that the clinical manifestations of the 1889 pandemic—runny nose, headache, high fever, severe chest inflammation, speeding up old respiratory diseases, and primarily killing elderly people—resembled COVID-19, a disease caused by a coronavirus, more than flu. They calculated that the human coronavirus OC43 had split from bovine coronavirus about 130 years before, approximately coinciding with the pandemic in 1889–1890. The calculation was based on genetic comparisons between bovine coronavirus and different strains of OC43. While their research had not been formally published as of November 2020,[7] a team from the University of Leuven in Belgium performed a similar analysis of OC43, identifying a crossover date in the late 1800s.[8]
In 2021, examination of contemporary medical reports noted that the clinical manifestations resembled those of COVID-19 rather than influenza, with notable similarities including multisystem disease, loss of taste and smell perception, and sequelae similar to long COVID[6] and the commonality of central nervous system symptoms.[9][8] Other scientists have pointed to the fact the mortality curve for Russian Flu is J-shaped as found in COVID-19 (little mortality in the very young, high mortality in the old), rather than the U-shaped mortality found in influenza infections (high mortality in the very young and very old).[23] However, there is not a scientific consensus that the 1889–1890 outbreak was caused by a coronavirus, with one analysis of the literature suggesting that the evidence for this cause is still "conjectural".[24]
Pathology[edit]
Patterns of mortality[edit]
Unlike most influenza pandemics such as the 1918 flu, primarily elderly people died in 1889.[7][25] Due to generally lower standards of living, worse hygiene, and poorer standard of medicine, the proportion of vulnerable people was higher than in the modern world.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic
Pages in category "1889 fires"
The following 5 pages are in this category, out of 5 total. This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1889_fires
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