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Social History of Medicine 1995 8(1):55-73; doi:10.1093/shm/8.1.55
© 1995 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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The Russian Influenza in the United Kingdom, 1889–1894

F. B. SMITH*

*History Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University Canberra, Australia

SUMMARY The pandemic of severe influenza known in western Europe as the Russian flu, with its associated infections, caused extensive morbidity and high general mortality. In the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, sufferers and their doctors were hard put to explain the visitation and resorted to analogies with physical or bacteriological phenomena, or recalled older beliefs in extra-terrestrial forces. The outcomes were more disturbing than was appreciated at the time, or since. The Russian influenza and its sequelae might well have had a crucial part in creating the ‘spirit of the 1890s’.

Keywords: epidemic constitution; influenza; miasmic contagion; Pfeiffer's bacillus; post-influenzal depression; Russian influenza; fin de siècle; suicide


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