Avian flu conjures memories of its cousin

By CAROLYN TYTLER
Apparently the avian influenza virus, H5N1, is presently winging its way toward North America. Some of my friends have fallen victim to fits of apprehension, which threaten to explode into full-blown panic attacks when the first dreaded case in a human appears on our continent.
Much of their alarm, I believe, stems from fear of the unknown. But in fact, a close cousin of the present infection, avian flu (H1N1) devastated the world community in 1918-1919.
Our grandparents knew it as the Spanish flu. It affected one-fifth of the global population and killed more people than World War I.
My mother often spoke vividly and emotionally of the difficulties her family faced at that time. It may be helpful to reflect on her memories of the worst pandemic thus far in recorded history.
My mother, Aileen, grew up in the village of Sundridge in Northern Ontario. The eldest of six children, she was 15 years old in 1918. Their large, drafty, brick home was heated by two wood stoves, one in the kitchen and one in the front parlor. Pipes from each one ran up the walls and along the ceilings to heat, however inefficiently, the upstairs bedrooms.
The washroom was an outhouse, a two-seater in the back yard. There were chamber pots under each bed for those family members too sick to make the trip down the stairs and out the back door. Ice-cold water came from a pump in the pantry. The water was heated on the kitchen stove for washing or to make tea. Saturday was the weekly bath day for everyone.
No one knew who was first in the family to be infected. It could have been one of the older children, catching the virus in their one-room schoolhouse, or my grandfather, owner of the General Store. It really didn't matter, because soon almost everyone in the village was sick, including the doctor. And then, the deaths began.
Across the street from the family home lived the village carpenter. Aileen and her siblings, when they were not too ill, would stand at the upstairs bedroom windows, watching the coffins being assembled on the opposite lawn and trying to guess, from the size of the box, who they were for. No one from the village died in a hospital during the epidemic. The nearest institutions, miles away in Huntsville and North Bay, were overflowing with their own local victims.
People were forced to rely on homemade remedies of questionable effectiveness. Cough medicine was a boiled mixture of onions and brown sugar.
Mustard plasters, wrapped in flannel cloth, were applied to congested chests until the skin became bright red. They were removed until the skin color faded, then a fresh one was applied. This process continued until the patient, or the parent, fell asleep, or until they ran out of mustard or flannel or both.
Aspirin had just appeared on the market, but because it was made by a German company, Bayer, people were afraid that their recent enemy might distribute a contaminated substance. They refused to use it.
Accordingly, today I tell my concerned friends that worrying is useless. Officials at all levels of governments are doing their best to prepare. If mother's family survived a related virus under such primitive conditions, surely we, with modern medicines, and a much healthier lifestyle, have less to fear.