If they sickened and died from typhus, cholera and other killer diseases, the eugenicists argued, then it was their own fault, because they lacked the drive to achieve a better quality of life. It didn’t occur to those elites to look for the causes of illness in the often abject living conditions of the lower classes: crowded tenements, long working hours, poor diet. It was common for privileged elites to look down on workers and the poor as inferior categories of human being, whose natural degeneracy predisposed them to disease and deformity. Public health policies-like immigration policies-were colored by eugenics. Throughout the industrialized world, most doctors either worked for themselves or were funded by charities or religious institutions, and many people had no access to them at all.

Notably, there was no real joined-up thinking when it came to healthcare. The world was a very different place in the first decades of the 20th century. One of the most profound revolutions took place in the domain of public health. We call that tidal wave the Spanish flu, and many things changed in the wake of it. If you already have Zoom, you will not need to download the platform again.Nearly 100 years ago, in 1918, the world experienced the greatest tidal wave of death since the Black Death, possibly in the whole of human history. Zoom is free to the public but you will need to download it to your computer first. GBH encourages you to use Zoom Webinar to watch for this event. This virtual event will begin at 12pm Eastern Daylight Time.įorum Network events are free and available to the public, but you must register for webinar access.

Spinney will discuss the parallels or lack thereof between the Spanish Flu and COVID-19, what we can learn from history, how pandemics begin and how they end, and our tendency to forget pandemics. In the book, Spinney examines the enduring effects of the pandemic flu, which killed over 50 million people worldwide, and society's response: how it altered global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion, and the arts. Okwandu speaks with Laura Spinney, internationally acclaimed science journalist and author, about her book, 'Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World.' In this Ford Hall Forum produced by GBH Forum Network, Science History scholar Udodiri R.

Laura spinney 1918