Delmarva During the Pandemic of 1918

Artwork from the Illinois State Department of Health in 1918. (Source: National Institutes of Health Library)

With the nation struggling with an unprecedented public health emergency as the coronavirus impacts the country, this program examines the impact of the so-called Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 on Delmarva and nearby points.  The virus took a grim toll in this region, and it overwhelmed the healthcare system, forcing the region to shut down for an extended period.  Although they didn’t call it social distancing at the top of the twentieth century, the methods they used practices similar to what the public health interventions we use today.  Thus, as the world struggles with this novel contagion, we will take a relevant look at the past to see how people a century earlier managed at a time when medical science did not have a treatment for the pathogen.