University Place

The UW, Madison and the Influenza Epidemic of 1918

– Welcome, everyone, to Wednesday Night @ the Lab. I’m Tom Zinnen, I work here at the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for UW-Extension and Cooperative Extension, and behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the UW-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year. Tonight it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Steve Oreck. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of History here. He was born in New York, in Manhattan, and went to school in New Orleans, high school in New Orleans at Newman School.

Then he went to MIT and studied both engineering and history. Then he went into the Navy, and after a while there, he went to MIT to get his master’s degree and then went do Louisiana State University to the medical school in New Orleans to get his MD degree. He then, he’s going to tell ya more of the details about this, but he was in the Navy as a surgeon attached with the Marine Corps. And as you know, the Marine Corps– No, it’s the other way around. The Navy is part of the Marine Corps.
(audience chuckling)

– [Steve] They’re happy to tell you that.
(audience laughing)

– Then in 1992, he came here to be on the faculty in the School of Medicine and Public Health and the Department of Orthopedics and retired there in 2008, and I believe that’s probably when you started in graduate school in history. Tonight we’re commemorating the centennial of the Armistice that brought to end World War I 100 years ago, so we’ll have– Very happy to be able to mark the occasion. Tonight we get to talk about the flu, the U, and the city of Madison. And this is story I’ve never heard before. I’m lookin’ forward to it, I hope you’ll enjoy it too. Please join me in welcoming Steve Oreck to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab.
(audience applauding)

– Thank you. Thank you, I decided to wear all black tonight as I’m celebrating two horsemen of the Apocalypse, both war and plague.
(audience laughs)

And just a little fun note, or not-so-fun note, I have a personal attachment to the flu. My great-grandfather was in New York City from where he was living with my great-grandmother and her daughters, one of which was my grandmother, in Colorado when in 1918 he became sick and died in the flu epidemic, which is why my great-grandmother and her daughters moved to New York, which is how my mother and my father, and you’re so lucky that I’m here tonight.
(audience laughs)

Or at least I think so. Okay, well, to get started, the influenza epidemic of 1918 was the greatest pandemic in modern history. During the main wave of the pandemic in 1918, perhaps 50 million people died worldwide. In the United States, the estimate is 650,000 people died, and many, many times that number were made ill. It is likely that these estimates are too low, especially as in many parts of the world, data was unavailable or unreliable. The Russian Revolution and Civil War was going on at this point, so data from there, just as an example, would not be available. This death toll which occurred primarily over the span of three to four months in the United States was greater than all of the war dead from all the wars fought by the United States including World War I. The number equivalent for today’s American population are shown on this slide.

The causative organism was unknown. There was no treatment other than rest and nursing care, and this particular strain of influenza had a preference for healthy adults, those who should have been least susceptible to the flu. In severe cases, death was rapid, sometimes in hours with obvious suffering on the part of the afflicted. Influenza is a viral disease that migrates between humans and various animals such as swine and avian species. I don’t think we’ve had any whale flu, however.
(audience laughter)

But this mixing is most common where you have humans and appropriate animals in close proximity, places like farms. While today, animal-human proximity on first-world farms like we might have here in Wisconsin is much less intimate than in less-developed countries where the new strains frequently emerge these days. This was not the case in 1918. This mixing is why new flu vaccines are needed every year, and immunity is not carried over from one infection with the flu to protect against another. And the influenza virus that came out of this mixing bowl in 1918 was one for which there was no natural defense.

The role of viruses in human disease had really not yet been elucidated in 1918, and there was no protective vaccination for influenza. Current scholarship suggests that the influenza epidemic actually began in Kansas in the spring of 1918, was transmitted to Europe by the movement of American troops where it became more virulent and was then transported back to the United States, arriving in Boston in the late summer of 1918. Early public accounts came from Spain, which was a neutral country without any press censorship, as none of the combatants wanted information about sickness in their armies to be publicized, and the disease was therefore christened the Spanish influenza. Unlike the Spanish Inquisition, it had nothing to do with Spain.

In the United States, the entry of the U.S. into the war in April of 1917 was followed rapidly by a wave of both spontaneous government, spontaneous and government-sponsored hyper-patriotism. Everything and everyone was subordinated to the war effort. For Wisconsin, with a large population of German origin and a congressional delegation that had been very much against the war, the deviation from patriotic fervor was even more suspect than anywhere else.

In the fall of 1918, when the epidemic was approaching the university and the city of Madison, the university itself was to be, due to the creation by the War Department of the Student Army Training Corps, or SATC, in essence an armed camp with almost all able-bodied male students actually in the military. The SATC also included vocational students training for enlisted technical specialties outside of the normal college students at UW. This created a unique situation where in most things and for most students, university authority was subordinated to military authority. This also created some level of subordination to the military in Madison itself since the university was the largest institution in Madison.

The University of Wisconsin in Madison present a particular case. They are tightly bound physically and emotionally, and yet in the fall of 1918, the university was less of a university and more of a military installation. How did the authorities, the city and state health officers, the university administration, and the Army respond to this epidemic? Who was in charge of this response? Who was responsible, and where were the dividing lines? In particular, how did the military presence on the UW campus affect the responses on campus and in Madison?

As mentioned, the fall semester of 1918 was unique for the University of Wisconsin as it was for many other universities around the country. The War Department had established the SATC to begin in the late summer and early fall of 1918. Unlike what we think of as the traditional Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC units, the members of the SATC were full-time military, living in barracks in uniform and under military discipline. Students, regular and vocational, would leave when training was complete or called by the draft.

In August of 1918, university presidents and deans in the Midwest attended a conference supervised by the colonel in charge of the SATC for the Upper Midwest. According to the minutes, “The chairman emphasized that the needs of the SATC “must take precedence over everything else. In other words, the needs of the service are paramount and not the needs of the university.” The meeting outlined a program of instruction which included a War Causes and Aims course with the syllabus provided by the government and 13 hours of specific military activity at a minimum every week for students including drill, inspection, and theoretical military instruction. Additional academic curricula were arranged by military authorities with emphasis on the subjects of particular relevance for military service based on which branch the student was to serve in, such as infantry, coastal artillery supply, so on.

The relationship between the universities with SATC units and the War Department outlined in this meeting was unprecedented. If the university had an SATC unit, that university was more like a military installation than a normal university. The commandant of the local SATC unit had been given almost unlimited authority over the regular administration. The needs of the SATC came first, and an SAT commandant could and would dictate policies and priorities to the university administration by declaring these policies essential to the SATC.

Subsequent to the August meeting, acting university President Birge sent a letter to the faculty. Acting President Birge stated that faculty would be exempted from the draft in order to serve the purpose of preparing the students for service in the military. They, the faculty, were to consider themself on, “war service,” although not in uniform, and previous policies on faculty loads and teaching hours were suspended until further notice. Shortly after the beginning of the fall semester, October 1 of 1918, the faculty received a memorandum from the War Department’s Committee on Education and Special Training which informed them that students would march in formation to and from classes in study rooms. Study hours would be supervised by the SATC staff, and instructors were urged that the members of the SATC when reciting in classrooms shall stand at attention and speak with clearness and decision. Perhaps in the fall of 1918, the university campus would have been more accurately described as Camp Badger.

Through September, as the influenza epidemic affected tens or hundreds of thousands across the nation and killed many of the afflicted, there was very little reportage of the epidemic in any of the Madison newspapers in any language. I’ll digress here to say that the German language paper had closed in July. There were papers published in other languages, but the Madison German paper had closed in July.

Throughout the first three weeks of September, the Madison newspapers were replete with stories about contributions to the war effort that the university would make in the upcoming semester. Women were offered a two-year nursing course equivalent to being in the SATC, and headers like, “Boys Eager for SATC Training” and, “Student Soldiers to Report September 30th,” were common. During the last week of September, the papers began to carry stories about the epidemic. On September 23rd, 4,500 cases were reported at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago with a death rate of 1.5%. However, the report noted, “Malady Conquered, Commandant Says.” This is typical as almost every report the Madison papers carried directly or indirectly saw the epidemic as controlled. Finally, on the 23rd and 25th, warnings about the Spanish flu, or spizz, as the paper called it, were front page news. The Madison city health officer, Dr. H.E. Purcell, warned about influenza and advised precautions. Get adequate rest, avoid chills, eat right, and if ill, don’t go out. Also on the 25th, the Capital Times ran an article describing how a medical home guard had been set up by federal authorities to assist communities hard hit by the flu.

On the 27th, a newspaper noted, “No Influenza at University Camp,” not reporting that a small number of influenza cases had been seen sporadically among SATC vocational students. On September 28th, a woman in Cambridge was reported as having died from influenza, the first such death in Dane County. When classes began on October 1st, university enrollment was 2,577 men in the SATC, 384 men not in SATC, and 1,705 women. Additional SATC vocational students were expected to arrive over the next several weeks. The SATC men were formally inducted into the Army or Navy or Marine Corps, as you see here, and drill commenced on October 2nd. The SATC students were all living in newly-constructed barracks, university housing that had been converted to barracks, or a gymnasium. An undated photograph from the Liberty Badger most likely taken just at the beginning of school shows the Red Gym converted to a barracks with rows upon rows of cots with perhaps 18 to 24 inches separating the men. No SATC men were permitted to be housed in private residences, particularly not in fraternity houses, which were described by SATC senior officers as being especially deleterious to a military attitude.
(audience laughs)

Go figure. The War Department guidance housing on SATC students in fact stated they should be housed in groups as large as possible, 40 men being the minimum. The housing of the SATC personnel in barracks or barracks-like condition allowed for enforcement of military discipline, conformity with military standards, and emphasized that the SATC students were soldiers first and students second. As soon as school opened, the influenza hit. By October 1, Dr. Robert Van Valzah, the head of Student Health, had taken over the University Club to be an infirmary with a projected capacity of 150 patients. Simultaneously, there was a nursing shortage. All six of the regular nurses employed by UW for Student Health had joined the military.

By October 3rd, there were at least 170 men in the infirmary, 20 over the planned capacity. In the first of a series of letters reporting on the situation on October 4th, Dr. Charles Bardeen, dean of the medical school, told Acting President Birge of 170 men in the University Club, 17 women filling separate infirmaries set aside for them to capacity, and several other women sick in rooms. There was no mention of any estimates of SATC men ill, but not sick enough to need the care in the infirmary. Dr. Bardeen told President Birge, “There is yet no evidence that we are dealing “with a true so-called Spanish influenza. “When college opens in the fall, “we have always had a considerable number “of grippe colds among the students.” Nevertheless, overflow patients had been sent to temporary infirmaries in Barnard and Lathrop Halls, and over 50 recovering SATC students were housed in civilian homes. News of the illnesses on campus had been openly reported. On that day, October 4th, Wisconsin State Journal reported 275 isolated at Varsity as a precaution against influenza, precaution. Although illness on campus had been reported, the press reports continued to deny Spanish influenza. On October 5th, The Daily Cardinal headed an article, “No Flu Cases, Say Physicians,” and the illness was described as old-fashioned grippe. This illustrated the ongoing pattern of playing down the epidemic.

In spite of the upbeat, almost sunny attitude of the papers, there was evidence that all was not well. On October 5th, draft calls by Army authorities were halted due to the flu. Madison newspapers reported the suicide of Colonel Hagadorn, commander at Camp Grant in Illinois. October 8th in the same edition with a headline stating, “Grippe Epidemic, General in State.” Although not reported by the Madison papers, the cause of Colonel Hagadorn’s suicide was his self-perceived inability to control the epidemic at Camp Grant. On October 9th, The Daily Cardinal reported the death of Arthur Neff at Saint Mary’s Hospital, the first UW and SATC student to die from influenza and the first influenza death in Madison proper.

During the second week of October, the full force of the epidemic hit. On October 10th, the state health officer, Dr. C.A. Harper, issued a general order closing all public gathering places, such as theaters, movie houses, saloons, saloons, and schools and churches throughout the state. All large public gatherings were banned. However, this did not apply to SATC activities such as drill and formations. On the 10th, the Wisconsin State Journal ran a headline, “1,000 Flu Cases in Madison,” although the same article indicated a level of uncertainty as to whether this was Spanish flu, indicating, once again, wishful thinking. Also on the 10th, Dr. Harper and Dr. Purcell met with members of the UW administration including Acting President Birge, Dean Bardeen, and Major McCaskey, who was commandant of the SATC. Minutes of this meeting showed no consensus, no consensus as to whether or not the epidemic had peaked. All classes of greater than 25 to 30 people were canceled, and female students were kept on campus rather than sending ’em home as they could be better supervised and cared for if needed on campus. Dr. Harper made it clear to the SATC commandant that his closing orders and restrictions did not apply to the SATC.

As the state health officer, Dr. Harper had no authority over military installations, and as the minutes of the August SATC meeting had made clear, SATC operations were a priority. The second and third weeks of October represented the height of the epidemic on campus and in Madison. Every day, the paper had death notices. News articles appealed for anyone with nursing training or experience to help. By October 14th, the headline read, “3,000 to 4,000 Cases of Flu in the City.” Many families had no adult well enough to care for those sick or to care for well children too young to fend for themselves. Madison Public School teachers volunteered to become visiting nurses, and high school boys, now out of school, also volunteered.

At the university, SATC classes continued normally, unaffected by the ban on larger lectures. The War Department had sent orders to cancel strenuous but not all drill for the SAT students due to the epidemic, and the university administration and Army were working cooperatively. Dean Bardeen praised Lieutenant Walker, one of the two Army physicians. However, the other, Lieutenant Sawicki, had made extravagant demands and moved the SATC-B, or vocational students, out of the infirmary. Unfortunately, Lieutenant Sawicki was the senior of the two doctors. Major McCaskey sent a telegram to Washington requesting no new students be transferred out at this time and no new students be sent in due to the epidemic. These were the vocational students who had completed training or were coming in for training. Higher authority denied his request.

The UW medical department communicated directly with the Army. Dr. J.J. Evans of the Department of Medicine sent a letter to Army medical authorities in Chicago on the 14th. He enumerated the statistics, described the difficulties with the nurse shortage, and requested there be a unified command authority for the medical care of SATC units– students, I’m sorry. He implied the Army medical personnel officially taking the lead would be welcome. However, although he praised Lieutenant Walker, he made, “Vigorous protest against the retention of Lieutenant Sawicki at the University of Wisconsin in any capacity,” and offered to send specifics of his medical incompetence. Documents do not reveal details, but within a few days, Lieutenant Sawicki disappeared from the records of the SATC. While the SATC was hardest hit in terms of percentage affected, the epidemic was general throughout Madison and Dane County.

On October 12th, the news reported the death of the first UW woman. The report of four to 5,000 cases in Madison on the 14th needs to be reemphasized because in 1918, Madison had a permanent population of approximately 37,000 and Dane County 88,000. When one subtracts children and the elderly from the population numbers and estimates a certain number of convalescence, this left little more than half of the adult population available for full activity. In Madison, as in the rest of the country, military activity continued with little modification due to the epidemic. Although draft calls had been temporarily suspended, 50 men previously inducted left for training camps on the 13th. About the same time, vocational SATC students who had completed training departed, and a new draft of over 600 vocational students arrived over the protests of the university and the SATC unit. Throughout the month of October, perhaps 1,000 men left Dane County for other various locations throughout the United States.

By the middle of October, the epidemic had begun to fade in Madison and on campus. The number of new cases that presented to university medical authorities had peaked, and on the 20th, the Wisconsin State Journal reported, “No New Flu Victims.” Even though the number of new cases had fallen off, there remained a large number of individuals severely ill. Influenza had taken a toll on medical providers with several doctors taken ill, 2/3 of the nursing sisters at St. Mary’s Hospital ill, and one volunteer health worker from the university dying. By the fourth week of October, the number of new cases were minimal with the exception of the new SATC vocational students who arrived around mid-October. In a telegram to the third assistant to the Secretary of War, the UW administration complained that the employment contracts for the physicians currently working for the Army at UW had not been officially received, and unless this was rectified by October 26th, there would remain but one physician, Lieutenant Walker, for 3,600 men. An additional complaint had been made about the new SAT students caught up, “Sent here against the recommendation of the commandant,” who had presented with 50 cases of influenza in the previous 24 hours.

Big surprise. In all, between October 22nd and 29th, 172 of the 624 new SAT students entered the infirmary with influenza. Within a few days, the official contracts had arrived. The doctors remained civilians, the Army preferring for the local physicians to remain under contract rather than be inducted in the military. From the very beginning of the epidemic, the university had been in almost constant contact with the Army through SATC staff with the Department of War. The tone of the contacts had been deferential, and is noted in the letter from Dr. Evans to the War Department concerning medical staffing, the leadership role was deferred to the military, matching actions to tone.

With the tapering off of the epidemic on October 25th, Dr. Evans presented a report to Acting President Birge. He summarized the activities of the medical staff since the beginning of the epidemic and presented the statistics for the period of October 1st through the 24th. SATC men infected with the flu, 943, 26% of the corps. Pneumonia cases 55, deaths 16. This represents a case fatality rate of about 1.7% overall, but a 29% death rate for those who developed pneumonia. This was a bacterial pneumonia probably on top of their influenza. Remember, in 1918 there are no antibiotics. The data for UW women was an estimate, as many of the women were not admitted to the women’s infirmary, but there were roughly 270 cases of the flu, 15% of the women enrolled, with 11 cases of pneumonia and one death. This data suggests that the epidemic was more widespread among the SATC men, and the disease was more severe among them as well. Only one faculty member died from the flu during the epidemic. During roughly the same time period, October 1st through the 26th, there were a total of 94 deaths reported in Madison. It’s not clear whether or not this number included the SATC deaths, you can’t find that out. And how many of the deaths were Dane County or even out-of-county residents who died in Madison? We really can’t tell. The fact that more SATC students became ill and died compared to the female undergraduates can be explained in several ways. The SATC men lived in crowded barracks conditions with little separation between the beds, and some of the newly constructed barracks were not as weatherproof or warm as they might have been. These living conditions were ideal for the spread of an airborne virus.

In addition to being thrown together in close quarters, there was an influx of new and previously unexposed SATC students throughout this time period, providing a large cohort for new infections of any severity and keeping a large viral pool circulating. SATC students, even though drill had been modified, still marched in formation to and from class and in general were more exposed to unpleasant weather than the women. There were at least 10 to 20 deaths in Madison during the last week of October. The U.S. Public Health Service warned against a recurrence of the epidemic because there were so many people in a weakened state. No specific precautions were taken by the SATC at this point. The first half of November saw momentous changes in the world situation and the beginning of a return to normal in the Madison area. The central powers collapsed with the Armistice between the Allies and Germany signed at Compigne and taking effect on November 11th, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. This collapse of the Central Powers, while a welcome event, had not been foreseen by the Allied command. With the Armistice, there was intense speculation concerning the future of the SATC and the SATC students. On November 14th, 168 new short-course SAT students arrived, followed by a two-week-long rise in influenza cases and morbidity.

This shows the Thanksgiving meal, and you can just see what the conditions are like. The State Health Authority ban on theaters had been lifted on December 7th, schools reopened on the 11th. With the resumption of normal activities and normal mingling, there was another rise in cases. A city ban on large gatherings was reimposed December 12th, and the SATC restricted to campus on the 18th, but there were no general closings. The War Department disbanded the SATC in the middle of December, and the university students went for the holidays. Many of the SATC college track students returned after the new year to continue as regular students. With the new year, business as usual returned to the university campus. As with the rest of the United States and the world, there would be a third wave of flu in the spring of 1919, but this resulted in only 329 cases on campus, 28 cases of pneumonia, and six deaths.

That death toll represented 0.24% of the enrolled student population. There is no indication of any bans on campus activities that were imposed for this spring wave of flu compared to those in the fall or comparable in severity to those in the fall. The authorities dealing with the 1918 influenza epidemic at the University of Wisconsin and in Madison consisted of several layers of authority and responsibility, hence the slide. The federal government acted through three agencies in particular, the Public Health Service, the War and Navy Departments, and the SATC directly. As with other imported diseases, the Public Health Service was aware of the epidemic in Europe and that influenza would cross the Atlantic.

The PHS distributed information on influenza to state and health departments, the War and Navy Departments controlled movements of men internally and externally and set the rules for the SATC. In Wisconsin, the state health officer had broad responsibility and authority, and in Madison, the city health officer also had extensive powers. The university administration had to cooperate with the military for SATC students, but the university administration was solely responsible for the non-SAT student, SATC students, about 350 men and the 1700 women.

In the late summer of 1918, there were over a million men in the American Expeditionary Force, AEF, and General Pershing wanted a million more over the next six months. The plan was for a 1919 spring offensive. Only a massive infusion of fresh American troops could make this happen as both the British and the French had reached the bottom of the manpower barrel. It is against this background that decisions, especially of the War Department, need to be understood. So what did the federal authorities do? As noted, bulletins on the flu were distributed, and when the epidemic hit the Boston area in September, a massive research effort to find the causative organism and methods of treatment had been undertaken. Unfortunately, this effort produced neither the causative organism of the influenza nor any serum or vaccine. There were some experimental ones, they didn’t work. While there were frequently heroic efforts to deal with the sick at military installations where the influenza appeared, the one action that could have been taken but was not was to suspend or minimize the movement of troops. It was understood that the primary means of the spread of the epidemic from one area of the country to the other was through this mass movement of men from infected areas to clean areas. In Wisconsin, the request of the university administration and the commandant of the SATC to stop troop movements and from the SATC outward demonstrated this. Once established in a military camp or facility, the jump to the civilian side was inevitable.

Restrictions and troop movements could never have been absolute. In any case, there would have been disease spread, but hopefully in a less explosive fashion. The experience of the SATC at UW were two drafts of new students in October and November resulted in significant numbers of new influenza cases clearly illustrates this point. By the time the SATC students reported to UW and the school term started, military authorities had been grappling with the flu epidemics for at least three weeks. The photos from the Liberty Badger, this is the yearbook for 1819, previously cited shows a living environment that could not have been more conducive to the spread of influenza. Certainly ropes could have been strung and sheets suspended between cots, as was done at the University Club infirmary. No such instructions were promulgated. However, the War Department did develop and promulgate, as mentioned, a strong request, actually demand, to have SATC students stand at attention when reciting. This was in time for the first two days of classes.

The UW administration was operating under significant constraints. The majority of its students, the men of the SATC, were in the military and under military discipline. Even so, the university could have been more aggressive, closing all classes except for the SATC as opposed to only stopping large classes. The actions of Dr. Bardeen, dean of the medical school, are especially puzzling. No matter what public face would be put on the epidemic, why was he so slow in stating the obvious in his communications with Acting President Birge? The epidemic was well underway, yet he was still stating opinion that this was nothing more than the usual grippe colds seen every fall. Even had Dr. Bardeen’s concern been to avoid panic or a negative effect on morale among the general population, that does not explain why he would prevaricate in internal documents.

The archives hold no single piece of evidence specifically stating why these individuals responded the way they did, but they do hold enough evidence to draw conclusions. America and all Americans had become a single tool in the arsenal of war. To be labeled a slacker was to be ostracized. Not buying or even not buying enough Liberty bonds was a cause to be identified as an outcast from polite society, or perhaps having your barn painted yellow or being tarred and feathered. A primary purpose of the draft was not to collect enough men for the Army, rather to slow the pace of entry of new recruits. Voluntary enlistments were so large, they had overwhelmed the capacity of the training camps. The Postmaster General had become in effect a national censor, censoring all publications that traversed the mail system and withholding that right as he saw fit. All German language papers had to provide translations of every article in the paper and so state at the head of every article.

Since morale had become a weapon of war, keeping morale up was simply another battle to be waged and won. Beyond projecting calm to prevent panic, the sunny pronouncements we see in the Madison press during the early period of the epidemic represented an attempt to keep morale up. Showing the positive side, or if no positive side, no news at all, is epitomized by the letter sent by Lieutenant E.S. Epstein, United States Army provost marshal of the SATC unit, to all the newspapers in Madison on October 12, 1918. This is a direct quote. “The War Department has ordered the provost marshal to stop publication of all SATC news. Nothing will be published about the influenza or anyone sick in the hospital unless approved by the commanding officer through the Intelligence office and the provost marshal. All newspapers violating the above rules are subject “to imprisonment in the federal system.”

There were additional details about items that could not be published, and the papers were warned that these were, “the last statements.” The implications of this letter are enormous. A junior officer, a second lieutenant, at a college training unit was empowered to tell newspapers what they might and might not publish under the rubric of military security and morale. This sort of proscriptive and general censorship by the military of civilian newspapers was unprecedented in any American conflict and was more severe and direct than wartime censorship would be in the future, World War II and beyond. Subsequent correspondence between G.M. Hyde, editor of the University Press Bureau, and Acting President Birge related Hyde’s discussion with the provost marshal, and the agreement to give press releases for the SATC to give press releases to the university bureau which would then distribute them. The tone of this letter made it clear that Mr. Hyde felt that neither the provost marshal’s complaints about the newspaper nor his restrictions were in any way, any way, excessive or unreasonable. The university had accepted the necessity of proscriptive censorship, an astounding occurrence. In fact, only a small proportion of the SATC deaths were reported in Madison papers after October 12. These were hospital or infirmary deaths that were public and could not be concealed.

What were the effects of the influenza epidemic of 1918 on the University of Wisconsin and the city of Madison? As far as the human toll, we can never be sure. One source says 328 deaths in 1918 in Dane County, the vast majority after October 1st. The city Health Department report for 1918 shows 194 of 234 total. Pneumonia deaths in Madison in October to December, roughly half the deaths total for Madison for the year. It’s not known if the deaths among the SAT students were included. The final report of Dr. Van Valzah sent to President Birge in June 1919 identified 36 SATC students’ deaths and three female student deaths during the fall semester, equaling a death rate approximately of 10 per 100,000 among the men and 1.7 per 100,000 among the women. In terms of overall death rates in the wider area, the overall death rate for Wisconsin is stated as 1.35 per 1,000 in one source and 2.8 per 1,000 in another, with the first source stating the death rate in the registration area, not just the state but the public health registration area, was 2.85 per 1,000. The death rate for the epidemic was reported as 4.1 per 1,000 in Dane County.

With these data, some conclusions can be drawn. On the UW campus, we can say the case and case fatality rates were markedly higher for the male SAT students than for the female students. Given the close quarters the SATC men lived in, inadequate heating in some of these quarters, and their greater exposure to weather during drill, the case and case fatality differences are not surprising. The death rate in Dane County appears above average, but under-reporting of influenza cases and influenza deaths in rural counties was noted at the time. The state Board of Health in its meeting of January 1919 proposed new regulations for the legislature for steps for future epidemics. Likewise, the City of Madison health officer made recommendations in his 1918 report on how to improve response to a future epidemic as well as praising the community spirit which prevailed during the epidemic. The epidemic was rapidly expunged from communal memory.

The 1918-19 yearbook, the Liberty Badger, had detailed coverage of the SATC units– the beginning of the lecture, those pictures you saw of the various services– that all came out of the Liberty Badger, and a list of those UW students or alumni killed in the war as seen in the first page of that listing. Yet, nowhere was there a single mention of the epidemic. SATC men who died at Camp Badger are not listed among the honored dead.

Likewise, the Gold Star Honor Roll, the memorial publication that listed the war dead to whom the Memorial Union was dedicated to in 1917, had only three names of SATC students. The biennial report of the Regents of the University of Wisconsin in 1920 which covered the years 1918 and 1919 gave short shrift to the epidemic. The Dean of Women’s report briefly mentioned how senior female students had volunteered to help with diet and sanitation at the women’s infirmary, and Dr. Bardeen as dean of the medical school gave a brief summary of the chronology, organizational issues, and outcomes. At the University Club, there is no plaque or memorial to note that that facility was an infirmary for hundreds of young men and not a few deaths during the epidemic. To the students and faculty of UW today, the UW of fall 1918 would be an incomprehensible foreign country.

Imagine if you will, 90% of the male students not simply in uniform but living in barracks on campus, marching to and from class under military discipline. For today’s campus, that would be over 15,000 men in uniform. Then imagine over the space of four to six weeks, 5,000 of these men becoming ill with a disease of unknown etiology for which there was no treatment or cure, and 150 to 250 of them die. How does the collective memory seem to expunge such an event? It seems to have happened, nonetheless. In Madison, imagine military police on the street with authority not only over the SAT students and any other military, but also empowered to intervene against civilians. The staff of the military training unit has been given authority to censor the contents proactively of your morning newspaper and to be up to date, your television and your Facebook and your Twitter and your Instagram and whatever else you have on your phone. And the editorial staff members who do not comply will be imprisoned.

In document after document, among primary sources, the picture of community solidarity on the university campus and in Madison is clear and impressive, leading citizens of Madison to convalescing and for all they knew still potentially contagious SATC students into their homes. Here they were treated as family members, given care, and pampered until they recovered. Teachers and high school students volunteered to enter the homes of the sick to provide basic care at no little risk to themselves. Businesses of many types complied with closure orders with little evidence of any resistance in spite of the significant financial losses incurred. Remember, this included the Christmas shopping season.

Such community spirit raises two questions, one about the past and one about the future. Given how deeply the entire community was involved in one aspect or another of the epidemic, how could memory be so easily expunged? We also should ask, were such a pandemic to strike again, would we see the same community solidarity now that was seen in 1918? For the first question, I can only suggest like Crosby and others that there was simply not room for the dual traumas of World War I and the influenza epidemic to coexist in the common memory. Since the war ended in triumph, as opposed to the epidemic that ended in mere survival, people unconsciously decided to remember the one and forget the other. As to the second question, that cannot be answered now. We can hope that our society has not become so fragmented that we could not come together in the face of this invisible threat. There is no doubt that another great pandemic will occur. The only question is when, not if.

Finally, there is the issue of subordination to military necessity. How does a free society balance the necessity for wartime compromises against unnecessary and potentially dangerous restrictions of freedom? The events on the UW campus in the fall of 1918 provide more than one example of how accepting a simplistic definition of military necessity was dysfunctional and in fact detracted from rather than aided the war effort. On the other hand, military necessity does exist during conflict and cannot be readily dismissed simply because it runs counter to our democratic principles. As part of the continuing balance between security and liberty, between personal freedom and public responsibility, this question is one with no ready answer, that deserves the attention of all citizens. Thank you.
(audience applauding)