How to understand a plague

摘要

The Spanish flu pandemic that began in 1918 killed around 50m people in a few years-more deaths than in the preceding four years of world war. Young adults seemed to perish disproportionately from what was an especially virulent strain of the influenza virus. Doctors could do very little about the sickness, so countries closed their borders and blamed each other. This book tells the story not only of the devastation at the time, but also of the century of scientific detective-work that was required to understand why the episode was so deadly.