PRESIDENT WILSON GETS THE SPANISH FLU -- 8/10/20
Today's selection -- from The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. In 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson was in Paris singlehandedly masterminding the direction of post-war treaty negotiations toward the new ideals he had established, he fell ill. That illness may very well have been the Spanish Flu, which had as a side effect an unexpected debilitation of the brain. Whatever it was, after he recovered, Wilson was not the same. The outcome of the talks turned darker, conforming much less to his ideals, and resulted in the acrimony that helped lead to a second world war:
"In March another 1,517 Parisians died [of the Spanish influenza], and the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that in Paris 'the epidemic of influenza which had declined has broken out anew in a most disquieting manner .... The epidemic has assumed grave proportions, not only in Paris but in several of the departments.' That month Wilson's wife, his wife's secretary, Chief White House Usher Irwin Hoover, and Cary Grayson, Wilson's personal White House physician and perhaps the single man Wilson trusted the most, were all ill. [Georges] Clemenceau and Lloyd George both seemed to have mild cases of influenza../;;;/
"Berle, later an assistant secretary of state, settled for writing Wilson a blistering letter of resignation: 'I am sorry that you did not fight our fight to the finish and that you had so little faith in the millions of men, like myself, in every nation who had faith in you. Our government has consented now to deliver the suffering peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections and dismemberments -- a new century of war.'
"Wilson had influenza, only influenza."
| author: John M. Barry | |||
| title: The Great Influenza | |||
| publisher: Penguin Group | |||
| date: Copyright John M. Barry, 2004, 2005 | |||
| page(s): 383-388 | |||
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