Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Today's article, "The Influenza Epidemic of 1918," on About.com, Kimberly's Genealogy Blog provides some interesting additional sources for those researching ancestors during the 1917-1918 time period, including the Influenza Digital Archive out of the University of Michigan's Center for the History of Medicine and the Pandemic Influenza Storybook, among others. As noted in the article, "Most are aware that WWI had a devastating impact on our ancestral history, claiming an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic of 1918, however, killed an estimated 50 million people, nearly a fifth of the world's population. Yet, it is rarely afforded more than a footnote in the historical accounts of the time.

Labels: disease and epidemics, medical history