The Most Viral Story Ever!
Viruses are never fun. More so if you are carrying a highly contagious strain that can possibly kill you. Even more so if you are a sailor who has returned home infected from Europe and given a free ride to the virus that eventually kills over 500,000 people; YOU being the first to go. That essentially, and unfairly, makes you the leading cause of the problem and puts you at the bitter end of huge posthumous criticism.
This is exactly what happened in the USA in 1918 during the Great Spanish Flu pandemic, sometimes known as the Swine Flu Pandemic. A sailor returned from Europe with the Spanish Flu Virus piggy backing on him. The virus had a jolly good run causing a great deal of problems; death being the leading issue. Scientists were aware of what a virus is but very few knew how to go about dealing with it. ‘A virus is piece of nucleic acid surrounded by bad news’ a memorable phase by Nobel Laureate Peter Medawar best describes the entity that was strange, lethal, and mostly dead. Yes, dead. The virus sprang into life quite instantly when it enters a nourishing environment. Once the host is acquired, the virus prospers by hijacking the genetic material of a living cell, and using it to reproduce more virus. Everything thereon is bad news.
A vaccine was the pressing need of the hour, and scientists initiated a vaccine development program at the military prison on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. 300 inmates volunteered to be part of the program, technically agreed to be lab rats, because they were promised pardons if they survived the battery of tests. 60 volunteers were finally selected for the tests.
The inmates were injected with infected lung tissue taken from the dead and then sprayed in the eyes, mouth, and nose with infected aerosol. If they still failed to contract the virus, they had their throats swabbed with discharges taken straight from the sick and dying. If this failed too, they simply asked the infected to cough directly into the open mouth, eyes, and nose of the volunteer. The 1910’s were evidently very intense times.
The result: of all the individuals involved in the experiment the only person who contracted the virus and swiftly died was the ward doctor. All the inmates seemed immune to the virus. The probable explanation given for this was that the pandemic has passed through the prison a week earlier rendering all the surviving inmates completely immune to the virus, and now granted a federal pardon too.
The pandemic raged on for a good year before disappearing as suddenly as it had arrived.
So, there’s your fix of a good story from the vault that’s just one of the many that deserve to go viral.
