"If Pneumonia Set In …"

A week after the first reports of Spanish influenza in and around Hobart, some 50 people had fallen ill with it. A week later, there were about 100 cases. (Among them was W.B. Owen, of brickyard fame; after several days of serious illness, he began to recover.) The whole force of the post office was out sick, except for Postmaster Kostbade himself. At the Pennsy depot, Agent Sayger struggled along with a depleted crew.

The Red Cross appealed to all nurses with any degree of training to help with nursing the sick.

By October 10 Indiana's Health Commissioner, Dr. J.E. Hurty — acting on a request by the federal government — ordered the closing of all places where people congregate, including schools and churches, theaters and pool halls. Worship services and public funerals were forbidden, along with all other public meetings. These measures, Dr. Hurty, insisted, were "wholly as a preventative against an epidemic."

The local newspapers ran advice for avoiding the contagion. Some of it was both sensible and effective (avoid crowds; stay at home if you feel sick), but some was useless (regulate your bodily functions, gargle with salt water, wear a mask). Dr. Hurty offered his own advice on how not to catch Spanish influenza: seek out fresh air, sunlight, exercise, clean surroundings, and avoid "the use of brushes and dusting"! That such an eminent doctor could offer such quaint advice is a reminder of the state of medicine in 1918.

Influenza was then widely and mistakenly thought to be caused by a bacillus. (While that was true of pneumonia, a common and sometimes deadly complication of Spanish influenza, the discovery of penicillin was a decade away, and the age of antibiotics would not come until the next world war.) A few late-19th-century experiments had demonstrated the existence of an infectious agent smaller than bacteria, but no one knew what that agent was or how it operated. No one had ever yet seen a virus: microscopes of that era were not powerful enough to capture those tiny, mysterious things. In the words of historian Alfred Crosby, researchers trying to find the cause of Spanish influenza "were in the position of looking for an invisible needle in a haystack crowded with visible needles and of not knowing that the visible needles were not what they were seeking."

And he is speaking of research conducted in the wake of the epidemic. At its height, overburdened doctors could do no more than hurry from one sickbed to the next, giving out words of reassurance and useless medicine. Those nurses called for by the Red Cross were the best remedy; again quoting Alfred Crosby: "Warm food, warm blankets, fresh air, and what nurses ironically called TLC — Tender Loving Care — to keep the patient alive until the disease passed away: that was the miracle drug of 1918."

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Ulric Blickensderfer left the little Ainsworth home where he had lived since 1903 for a visit to Chicago. There he caught influenza and died of pneumonia on October 5. His body was brought back to Hobart and buried in Crown Hill Cemetery beside his wife, Susan, who had died in 1911.*

From Chicago also came the sad news of the death of Florence "Flossie" Carey. Her family had spent several years farming southwest of Ainsworth before relocating near Wheeler, so she had grown up in the area. As a young woman she moved to Chicago and trained as a nurse, hiring herself out to work cases in private homes and, according to reports, becoming highly in demand among wealthy and prominent Chicagoans for her skill. Most recently, she had nursed a Catholic priest stricken with Spanish influenza. Just as he recovered, she fell ill. Her knowledge of the disease and its methods led her to remark that "if pneumonia set in she would never recover." She judged her last case correctly. Her parents brought her body home for burial in the McCool Cemetery.

Back in Ainsworth, August and Dora Maybaum heard from their son, Harold, late in September: he was now stationed at a training camp near London, England. The next news they had was of his death from pneumonia. That the newspapers could not agree on the date of his death may have been bad reporting, or may have reflected the disruption of the army's organization as the epidemic swept through its camps.

A couple days later, Bertha Bodamer left for Wheatfield, Indiana to attend the funeral of a nephew who had died of influenza at Camp Sherman in Ohio. Another nephew lay ill in a camp in Alabama.

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*The Blickensderfers can no longer be found there; either their remains were later moved, or their grave markers lost.


Sources:
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 27 Sept. 1918.
♦ Crosby, Alfred W. America's Forgotten Epidemic: The Influenza of 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
♦ Davies, Pete. The Devil's Flu: The World's Deadliest Influenza Epidemic and the Scientific Hunt for the Virus That Caused It. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2000.
♦ "Death of Florence M. Carey." Hobart Gazette 11 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Death of Harold Maybaum." Hobart Gazette 11 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 10 Oct. 1918; 17 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 11 Oct. 1918; 18 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Mrs. Blickensderfer Dead." Hobart News 11 Nov. 1911.
♦ "Nurses Are Wanted For Red Cross Work." Hobart News 10 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Quarantine May Be Lifted Sunday." Hobart Gazette 18 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Schools and Public Places Closed." Hobart Gazette 11 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Schools to Be Closed Until Oct. 20 Is the Order Received Today." Hobart News 10 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Spanish Influenza Claims Miss Flossie Carey as a Victim." Hobart News 10 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Suggestions Regarding Influenza Epidemic." Hobart News 10 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Ulrick Blickensderfer Buried at Crown Hill Tuesday." Hobart News 10 Oct. 1918.
♦ Untitled obituary. Hobart Gazette 11 Oct. 1918.