It start with a low - grade pyrexia , but even a simple-minded illness in 1918 can quickly become severe . And this one did . Within a few days , what doctor had initially called a " three day fever " had progressed to a gamey feverishness and included a coughing and a worry . Victims developed brown topographic point appeared on their buttock and oxygen - deprivation make their lips ( and eventually their total expression ) to turn blue as fluid fulfill their lungs . They choke to death due to an illness that became known as the Spanishflu .

The Spanish flu hit the young and healthy peculiarly hard , killing more than 50 million people across the earth and claiming more lives than World War I. But did it really originate in Spain ?

Spanish Flu Origin

The Spanish grippe , describe for stimulate millions of deaths in Spain presently after it was place , did n’t in reality uprise in Spain . Although the Spanish Flu ’s exact distributor point of origination has been hotly debate , some struggle it all began in Haskell County , Kansas . There ’s a long - held hypothesis that Camp Funston , a U.S. Army base , was home to the first confirmed outbreak on March 11 , 1918 . Within hour of the first soldier falling ill , wads more came down with the grippe . By weeks ' end , at least 500 masses on al-Qaeda were sick with it .

At least one historian , however , believes that fresh discovered records show the outbreak began in 1917 in Shanxi Province , China , and that the grippe was overspread by Chinese jack take to wreak in France and Britain during World War I. This also would explain why the disease was so well - traveled across the globe . Many of the septic were part of the Chinese Labor Corps who moved through the east coast of North America and Canada on the way to Europe [ rootage : Vergano ] .

From there , this highly communicable flu spread like wildfire , claiming life in England , France , Germany and Spain . The pandemic also continued across China , India , Japan and the rest of Asia before make a return coming into court in the U.S. citizenry reportedly cast off numb in the street in Boston , and 50,000 people across Massachusetts were suddenly sick and dying . In Philadelphia , churches , schools and other public property close , but nigh 300 people die in a exclusive day . In New York , the individual day end toll rose to 851 . And , in Chicago , so many citizenry died that the metropolis temporarily criminalise funerals [ source : Galvin ] .

The virulent strain finally subsided , but the threat is n’t completely gone . The Spanish flu live on , thanks to an ancestral strain ofH1N1 influenzathat still crops up today [ source : Vergano ] .

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