| Disease follows war with lethal regularity, and World War I was no exception. The influenza epidemic of 1918 raked armies on both sides of the western front and swept the globe, killing 20 to 40 million people to become the third worst plague in history. Most historians, however, relegate it to a few sentences in their studies of the war period. This dissertation seeks to restore the catastrophe to American historical memory.; The study examines the role of infectious diseases in the war through the experience of army medical officers who served on the “front lines” and often mediated health policies between the state and the society. Their negotiations were complicated in several ways: medical officers were soldiers committed to the state's war aims that required soldiers to die for their country, but also physicians committed to the health of every individual; they reported to the army line command, but appealed to elected officials and the public on army medical policy; they policed soldiers' health and behavior, yet lobbied the War Department to improve army health conditions; and although medical officers worked harder than other officers to prevent disease during war, the public held them accountable for sickness and deaths from disease.; Using official government documents, unpublished army communications, medical officers' scientific articles and memoirs, and other war memoirs, the study reveals how the War Department, Congress, medical officers, the medical profession, and soldiers and their families negotiated policies regarding soldiers' health and welfare, and how these groups responded to outbreaks of measles and pneumonia in the training camps in 1917–1918 and to the influenza epidemic of 1918–1919.; Despite a generation of medical advances, medical officers failed to prevent the epidemic. More American soldiers died of flu and pneumonia in the war than in combat. The epidemic interfered with U.S. military operations and threatened to undermine public confidence in the state's ability to protect soldiers' health. It also damaged medical officers' confidence in their ability to control disease. This failure caused many medical officers and others to dismiss the epidemic as a meaningful event, and historians have followed their lead. |
