This thesis is a biocultural analysis of the 1918 influenza pandemic among soldiers in the Polish army and the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) training in Canada. Using an ethnographic epidemiological method and a variety of archival sources, I explore the 1918 influenza pandemic and focus on the first two pandemic waves which occurred between 1 January and 31 December 1918. This research examines the impact of influenza at the Polish army camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake, on soldiers treated in military hospitals across Ontario, and among recruits on troopships bound for Europe. The primary questions behind this thesis are: in what ways did the war effort intersect with pandemic influenza to affect soldiers in the Polish army camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake, across Ontario, and on troopships bound for Europe? What patterns of morbidity and mortality characterize the first two waves of the pandemic in Ontario’s military hospitals? Were all soldiers equally vulnerable to infection and death from influenza? These questions are addressed in this ‘sandwich thesis’ in three papers which are either published or have been submitted for publication.
Pandemic influenza and the war effort in Canada were intimately linked. At the Polish army camp, crowding was prevalent in all aspects of the soldiers’ lives and facilitated the spread of airborne infectious diseases, including influenza. Soldiers continued to be sent to Canada from infected cities in the U.S. throughout the fall wave of the pandemic. Similar events played out on troopships bound for Europe in the summer of 1918 where epidemics of influenza occurred on board, in spite of regulations established in the summer of 1918 to prevent troopships from transporting soldiers sick with influenza. These findings support Humphries’s (2005, 2012) assertion that the war effort took precedence over the health of individual soldiers and the surrounding community. On the other hand, military authorities put the Polish army camp under quarantine in the fall of 1918 and great efforts were made to ensure that sick soldiers were cared for during the epidemic. This close examination of the epidemic in a particular location suggests that military management of the influenza pandemic was complicated and was mediated by a variety of local factors.
Previous experience with the influenza virus, and the overarching social perceptions of the disease, also tempered the way in which military authorities managed the pandemic. I compare the way in which military doctors treated CEF soldiers hospitalized with influenza to those hospitalized with venereal disease. I argue that whereas influenza was understood to be a ‘normal’ or ‘everyday’ infection that rarely killed young people in the prime of life (being most deadly to the very young and old), other infectious diseases, such as venereal diseases, were treated with lengthy stays in hospital in spite of the need for soldiers overseas. This highlights the way the social perception of disease affected the ways in which the military handled sick soldiers.
This research also confirms the presence of the first wave of influenza among soldiers of the CEF in the spring and summer of 1918. The Admission and Discharge (A&D) records for military hospitals confirm that the first wave of pandemic influenza circulated among soldiers training in Ontario’s military camps between March and May of 1918. The second wave occurred between September and December that year. Mortality during the second wave was more severe, with a case fatality rate of 4.7% among hospitalized soldiers, more than double the rate of 2.3% from March to May. However, not all soldiers were equally vulnerable to the 1918 influenza pandemic. Morbidity and mortality were concentrated in the military district headquarters, and during the second wave, new recruits were more vulnerable to both infection and death than seasoned soldiers. I hypothesize that this is the result of cross-protection between successive waves of the pandemic, whereby seasoned soldiers were less vulnerable during the fall wave by virtue of exposure to the first wave of the pandemic in the military. Since new recruits were most likely conscripts, this is another way in which the war effort in Canada was linked to soldier morbidity and mortality. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/18620 |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Creators | Bogaert, Kandace |
| Contributors | Herring, D. Ann, Anthropology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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