By John Carranza In the 1980s, the United States experienced a new disease that seemed to target young, gay men living in New York City and San Francisco. From the beginning, those doctors and scientists willing to treat members of the gay community remained perplexed as to why these men, their ages ranging from their […]
The Flu Epidemic, 1918-1919
The “Spanish Flu” that dispatched poor Lavinia Swire on Downton Abbey last week killed more people in 1918-19 than died in World War I itself. The war took approximately 16 million lives, famously decimating an entire European generation of young men; the flu took 50 million and was truly a world phenomenon.