Health crises such as the SARS epidemic and H1N1 have rekindled interest in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which swept the globe after the First World War and killed approximately fifty million people. Epidemic Encounters zeroes in on Canada, where one-third of the population took ill and fifty-five thousand people died, to consider the various ways in which this country was affected by the pandemic. How did military and medical authorities, health care workers, and ordinary citizens respond? What role did social inequalities play in determining who survived? Contributors answer these questions as they pertained to both local and national contexts. In the process, they offer new insights into medical history’s usefulness in the struggle against epidemic disease.
Introduction / Magda Fahrni and Esyllt Jones
Part 1: Public Responses to the Influenza Pandemic in Canada
1 The Limits of Necessity: Public Health, Dissent, and the War Effort during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic / <
