woodrow wilson quotes on spanish flu

“Wilson thought the French had spies all around him. The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 infected more than one-third of the world. https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-campaigns It was horrific. Lingering effects of the 'Spanish flu' may have hindered Wilson's ability to effectively advocate for his '14 Points' at the Paris Peace Conference. The leaders were in the midst of an ongoing, heated debate when Wilson fell ill, and once he had recovered enough to resume the discussion, he quickly caved to their terms. But some people believe that the illness might have affected the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference. However, a first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US. He was insistent that it was ‘his way or the highway’ on pretty much everything.”. “When the machinery is broken—I am ready.”. The 1918 “Spanish” flu was notorious for aggressively attacking the respiratory system. The president was confined to his bed for five days battling a 103-degree fever and racking coughs while his doctor, Grayson, lied to the press that it was nothing more than a bad cold. When Wilson was finally well enough to re-join the Conference, he scarcely resembled the man who had fought so doggedly for his principles. The culprit wasn’t poison, but the same potent strain of influenza nicknamed the “Spanish flu” that would eventually kill an estimated 20 million worldwide, including more than 600,000 in the United States. Again, the details were kept from the public, and Wilson continued to preside over the country with some major help from his wife, Edith, until the end of his term in 1921. Thus it earned this name. “The impact was pretty dramatic in my view,” says Barry. 10 thoughts on “Woodrow Wilson and the ‘Spanish’ flu.” BigFire says: October 13, 2014 at 4:33 pm. ... Woodrow Wilson, at a critical juncture of the Versailles peace negotiations in Paris in April 1919. Recognizing that "the whole of civilization seemed to be in the balance," his physician downplayed the sickness and ordered bed rest. Returning to the United States, things only got worse for Wilson. Did Wilson’s illness play a significant and disruptive role in the Paris peace negotiations? Germany's World War I Debt Was So Crushing It Took 92 Years to Pay Off, The Last Day of World War I on HISTORY Vault. This included psychosis, which was usually temporary.”. The president lay in bed, wracked with coughing fits, diarrhea, and high fever, while his staff tried to make sense of his delirious rantings. "The New Freedom : A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People" “Coming from the President, whom we all knew so well, these were very funny things, and we could but surmise that something queer was happening in his mind.”. 2 And like President Trump and the coronavirus, Wilson also got the flu. On the night of April 3, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson began to suffer from a violent cough. Grayson later described the long night spent at Wilson’s bedside as “one of the worst through which I have ever passed. As chief usher Irwin Hoover recalled, they simply couldn’t convince Wilson that the hotel was not, as he insisted, teeming with French spies. ... even as Woodrow Wilson reportedly contracted the flu … All Rights Reserved. In the fall of 1918, as President Woodrow Wilson scrambled to end World War I, the flu pandemic began its lethal march across the country, killing at … John Barry, author of the 2004 book, The Great Influenza, draws parallels between today's pandemic and the flu of 1918. Shortly after arriving in Paris, Wilson caught the flu. This political cartoon from the Tampa Tribune features an image of President Woodrow Wilson in an influenza mask. As The New Yorker reported earlier this year, Wilson had wanted leniency for Germany in order to foster world peace and diplomacy. “But our government has consented now to deliver the suffering peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, dismemberments—a new century of war.”, READ MORE: Germany's World War I Debt Was So Crushing It Took 92 Years to Pay Off. The terrifying, censored coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu . WATCH: The Last Day of World War I on HISTORY Vault. He was bizarrely obsessed with his furniture and his automobiles, and pretty much everyone around him noted it.”, Wilson’s chief usher, a man named Irwin Hoover, wrote later that “something queer was happening in [the president’s] mind” and that “[o]ne thing is certain: he was never the same after this little spell of sickness.”. The name of Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain (BMJ,10/19/1918) where it allegedly killed 8 million in May (BMJ, 7/13/1918). https://www.history.com/news/woodrow-wilson-1918-pandemic-world-war-i https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/632876/woodrow-wilson-caught-1918-flu It also may have weakened his health overall. Although instances of “the psychoses of influenza” had been reported by physicians as early as the Russian Flu outbreak of 1889, there was no treatment for the condition, which usually went away on its own. In 1918, when President Woodrow Wilson was in the midst of negotiating with his British and French counterparts the treaty to end World War I, he got a violent case of the flu. “The most comprehensive study of the 1918 pandemic noted how common neurological disorders were,” says Barry. Wilson immunized himself from the harsh criticism Trump has received for his bungled response to the coronavirus by simply not talking about the Spanish flu. Woodrow Wilson – Spanish flu. “They were second only to the lung. “Wilson had been adamant, insisting on the ‘14 Points,’ self-determination, and ‘peace without victory.’ Clemenceau had even accused him of being ‘pro-German.’ All of a sudden, Wilson caved in on all 14 points except the League of Nations, and only because Clemenceau threw him a bone.”. President Woodrow Wilson's administration downplayed the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed some 675,000 Americans. It may have also affected the outcome of the 1919 peace talks in Parias after WWI. The deadliest in history, it … Newspapers published frequent updates on Wilson’s convalescence, citing Grayson’s steady reassurances that their unshakeable leader was merely suffering from a cold, which was “no cause for worry.” The White House also implied that Wilson himself was somehow uniquely equipped to defeat the disease, since he “always throws off the deepest colds quickly.”. “Spanish influenza” is something of a misnomer, as there is no evidence that the outbreak began in Spain. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. The “Spanish” flu of 1918 was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. The war had monopolized Wilson’s attention during his second term in office, to the point that he wouldn’t even acknowledge the 1918 influenza pandemic (often referred to as the Spanish flu at that time), which killed nearly 700,000 Americans. Wilson still never addressed the 1918 flu pandemic, but his last sentence is a confirmation that he at least knew how it felt to experience the kind of total physical deterioration that a virus like the 1918 flu can cause. Georges Clemenceau, President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George during the Paris Peace Conference on June 28, 1919. Instead of safeguarding the world from future wars, the Treaty of Versailles helped pave the road to World War II. Dubbed the Spanish flu, it is estimated to have killed 50 to 100 million worldwide. In October of that same year, Wilson nearly died from a stroke, which caused partial blindness and partial paralysis on his left side. In both cases, he says, "the outbreak was trivialized for a long time." Michael Beschloss reviews how Woodrow Wilson's desire to keep morale up during World War I contributed to the spread of the Spanish flu, a pandemic that killed millions. Wilson’s illness was made even worse by its timing—the president was left bedridden in the middle of the most important negotiations of his life, the Paris Peace Conference to end World War I. Wilson came to the Paris negotiations armed with his visionary “14 Points” strategy for achieving world peace. However, it became known as the Spanish flu due to the quantity of infection reports in the Iberian Peninsula—including the illness of Spanish King Alfonso XIII. Few noticed the epidemic in the midst of the war. “Quite the reverse. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! President Woodrow Wilson photographed in good health. Barry speculates that if not for the pandemic, World War II might never have erupted. Spanish Flu, Woodrow Wilson, and My Family. Today, the Spanish flu is anything but forgotten. Clemenceau demanded billions in reparations for the monumental loss of French lives and property at German hands, but Wilson wanted to spare Germany such humiliation and focus instead on building up the League of Nations. “I am a broken piece of machinery,” Wilson said before his death in 1924. Yet President Woodrow Wilson, … President Woodrow Wilson faced the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 that killed 20 million to 50 million people around the world while the … In April 1919, President Woodrow Wilson joined other world leaders in Paris to hammer out peace terms for World War I, which had ended the previous November. First, Congress rejected American participation in the League of Nations, the last surviving remnant of the “14 Points,” and then Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke from which he never fully recovered. The "Big Four" leaders at the Paris Peace Conference in May 1919. Perhaps you’ve heard of the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. In a letter to Wilson’s private secretary, Joseph Tumulty, White House physician Cary T. Grayson explained that the illness was so sudden and severe that he “was at first suspicious that [Wilson’s] food had been tampered with.” While Grayson admitted to Tumulty that the president had indeed contracted the “treacherous” influenza—and that he was anxious about the president's condition—the doctor wasn’t nearly as forthcoming with the American people. Historians agree that one of the chief causes of the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party was the humiliation and economic desperation inflicted on the German people by the Treaty of Versailles. For Wilson’s negotiation team in Paris and his supporters back home, the Treaty of Versailles signed in June 1919 was a betrayal of everything Wilson had stood for, and set the stage for more conflict and death on European soil. The infection was worst in the young and previously healthy, whose immune systems could overreact to the virus and drown the lungs with fluid, killing patients in a matter of days. He survived, but he was never the same again, physically or mentally. Even after their burning fevers subsided, flu victims described “post-influenzal manifestations,” psychotic delusions and visions that resulted from damage to the nervous system, says John Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. It sounds like 2020, but it was the Spanish flu of 1918. Though we can’t say with any certainty that Wilson’s bout of influenza was related to his about-face, it is possible that it weakened his reserve. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The British prime minister, Lloyd George, came to visit Wilson during his recuperation at the Hôtel du Prince Murat and labeled Wilson’s condition a “nervous and spiritual breakdown” in the middle of the heated Paris negotiations. The young aide’s assessment was tragically prescient. The reason why it’s call Spanish Flu, even though it did not originate there is that the government of Spain at the time is the ONLY country on Earth not actively suppressing the news of the disease’s spread. Woodrow Wilson with Cary T. Grayson on his left, circa 1918. Behind closed doors at the Hôtel du Prince Murat, the situation was grave. William Bullitt, an assistant to the Department of State and a loyal Wilson attaché at the Paris negotiations, immediately proffered his resignation. But for those who survived the initial onslaught, some also experienced neurological symptoms. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. The Spanish flu's reach was so complete that its death toll dropped the average life expectancy in the United States by 12 years. But parts of Wilson’s post-war scheme were adamantly opposed by the other chief powers at the Paris Peace Conference, namely France and Great Britain. Seeming to come from nowhere in the waning days of World War I, it spread through a war-ravaged world like wildfire. Wilson did manage to throw off the virus, saving Grayson and the rest of the administration from having to come clean about the deception. “About this time he also acquired a peculiar notion he was personally responsible for all the property in the furnished place he was occupying,” Hoover said. I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious.”. One hypothesis is that the neurological disorder experienced by Wilson and others was caused by brain swelling (encephalitis) associated with the flu. "Woodrow Wilson never made a … By April, the Paris negotiations were deadlocked, and that was precisely the moment when Wilson fell ill. "People were turning so dark blue from lack of oxygen that, in the book I quote one doctor writing a colleague saying that he could not tell white soldiers from African American soldiers." FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. “I was one of the millions who trusted confidently and implicitly in your leadership and believed that you would take nothing less than ‘a permanent peace’ based on ‘unselfish and unbiased justice,’” wrote Bullitt. (Apparently, Smithsonian reports, Wilson thought some furniture had gone missing, though it hadn’t moved at all.) The French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, openly clashed with Wilson over the level of economic punishment to inflict on the Germans. “You can’t absolutely prove that he wouldn't have caved in on everything anyway, but if you know anything about Wilson, there’s nothing in his behavior that suggests he was a compromiser on issues like that,” says Barry. READ MORE: US Presidents Who Became Ill in Office, WATCH: The Spanish Flu Was Deadlier than WWI. “In many ways, it is hard for modern people living in First World countries to conceive of a pandemic … Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images. Barry said it certainly had an impact. First Lady Edith Wilson once delivered 1,000 roses to female war workers who had come down with the Spanish flu. As John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza, told TIME, “anything negative was viewed as hurting morale and hurting the war effort.”. From numerous sources, it appears that Wilson suffered from similar effects during his fight with the flu at the Paris Peace Conference. From left to right: Britain's David Lloyd George, Italy's Vittorio Orlando, France's Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson. His condition quickly worsened to the point that his personal doctor, Cary Grayson, thought the president might have been poisoned. It included calls for open and transparent peace treaties, freedom and self-determination for all European nations, disarmament, and above all the creation of a “general association of nations”—later called the League of Nations—to actively prevent all future wars. But on April 3, 1919, Wilson fell ill with flu-like symptoms. Britain and France, on the other hand, were pushing for harsher consequences—steep debt, loss of land, and French occupation in the Rhineland. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. The flu had weakened both his body and his mind, and Wilson simply didn’t have the strength or the will to stand his ground. “He became paranoid,” says Barry.

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