1889–1890 Pandemic

The 1889–1890 flu pandemic, also known as the "Asiatic flu" or "Russian flu", was a pandemic that killed about 1 million people worldwide, out of a population of about 1.5 billion. It was the last great pandemic of the 19th century, and is among the deadliest pandemics in history.

The most reported effects of the pandemic took place from October 1889 to December 1890, with recurrences in March to June 1891, November 1891 to June 1892, winter of 1893–1894, and early 1895.

It is not known for certain what agent was responsible for the pandemic. Since the 1950s it has been conjectured to be Influenza A virus subtype H2N2. A 1999 seroarcheological study found the strain to be Influenza A virus subtype H3N8. A 2005 genomic virological study says that "it is tempting to speculate" that the virus might not have been an influenza virus, but human coronavirus OC43. Danish researchers reached a similar conclusion in 2020, in a study which had not been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal as of November 2020^[update]. They described the symptoms as very like those of COVID-19.

Outbreak and spread

Modern transport infrastructure assisted the spread of the 1889 influenza. The 19 largest European countries, including the Russian Empire, had 202,887 km of railroads, and transatlantic travel by sea took less than six days (not significantly different than current travel time by air, given the timescale of the global spread of a pandemic). It was the first pandemic to spread not just through a region such as Eurasia, but worldwide.

The flu was first reported in the Central Asian city of Bukhara in the Russian Empire, in May 1889. The Trans-Caspian railway enabled it to spread farther into Samarkand by August, and Tomsk, 3,200 km away, by October. Since the Trans-Siberian Railway had not yet been constructed, spread to the east was slower, but it reached the westernmost station of the Trans-Caspian, Krasnovodsk (now known as Türkmenbaşy), and from there the Volga trade routes which carried it by November to Saint Petersburg (infecting 180,000 of the city's under one million inhabitants) and Moscow. By mid-November Kiev was infected, and the next month the Lake Baikal region was as well, followed by the rest of Siberia and Sakhalin by the end of the year.

From St. Petersburg, the infection spread via the Baltic shipping trade to Vaxholm in early November 1889, and then to Stockholm and the rest of Sweden, infecting 60% of the population within eight weeks. First Norway, and then Denmark, followed soon after. The German Empire first received it in Poznań in December, and on 12 November 600 workers were reported sick in Berlin and Spandau, with the cases in the city reaching 150,000 within a few days, and ultimately half of its 1.5 million inhabitants. Vienna was also infected around the same time. Rome was reached by 17 December. The flu also arrived in Paris that month, and towards its end had spread to Grenoble, Toulon, Toulouse, Lyon, and Ajaccio. At this point Spain was also infected, killing up to 300 a day in Madrid. It reached London at the same time, from where it then spread quickly to Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dublin.

The first case on American soil was reported on 18 December 1889. It then quickly spread throughout the East Coast and all the way to Chicago and Kansas in days. The first death, Thomas Smith of Canton, Massachusetts, was reported on 25 December. San Francisco and other cities were also reached before the month was over, with the total US death toll at about 13,000. From there it spread south to Mexico and farther down, reaching Buenos Aires by 2 February.

Durban in South Africa was reached in November 1889, while India received it in February 1890, and Singapore and Indonesia did by March. These were followed by Japan, Australia, and New Zealand by April, and then China in May; the infection continued to spread, reaching its original starting point in Central Asia.

In four months it had spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Deaths peaked in Saint Petersburg on 1 December 1889, and in the United States during the week of 12 January 1890. The median time between the first reported case and peak mortality was five weeks. In Malta, the Asiatic flu took hold between January 1889 and March 1890, with a fatality rate of 4% (39 deaths), and a resurgence in January to May 1892 with 66 fatalities (3.3% case fatality). When this flu began, whether it was contagious was debated, but its quick action and pervasiveness across all climates and terrains proved that it was.

Map showing recorded dates of the influenza epidemic in 1889 and 1890.

Responses

Medical treatment

There was no standard treatment of the flu; quinine and phenazone were used, as well as small doses of strychnine and larger ones of whiskey and brandy, and as cheaper treatments linseed, salt and warm water, and glycerin. Many people also thought that fasting would 'starve' the fever, based on the belief that the body would not produce as much heat with less food; this was in fact poor medical advice. Furthermore, many doctors still believed in the miasma theory of disease rather than infectious spread; for example, notable professors of the University of Vienna, Hermann Nothnagel and Otto Kahler considered that the disease was not contagious.

Public health

A result of the Asiatic flu in Malta is that influenza became for the first time a compulsorily notifiable illness.

Identification of virus subtype responsible

Influenza virus

Researchers have tried for many years to identify the subtypes of Influenza A responsible for the 1889–1890, 1898–1900 and 1918 epidemics. Initially, this work was primarily based on "seroarcheology"—the detection of antibodies to influenza infection in the sera of elderly people—and it was thought that the 1889–1890 pandemic was caused by Influenza A subtype H2, the 1898–1900 epidemic by subtype H3, and the 1918 pandemic by subtype H1. With the confirmation of H1N1 as the cause of the 1918 flu pandemic following identification of H1N1 antibodies in exhumed corpses, reanalysis of seroarcheological data suggested Influenza A subtype H3 (possibly the H3N8 subtype) as a more likely cause for the 1889–1890 pandemic.

Coronavirus

After the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, virologists started sequencing and comparing human and animal coronaviruses, and comparison of two virus strains in the Betacoronavirus 1 species, bovine coronavirus and human coronavirus OC43, indicated that they had a most recent common ancestor in the late 19th century, with several methods yielding most probable dates around 1890. Authors speculated that an introduction of the former strain to the human population might have caused the epidemic. In 2020, Danish researchers Lone Simonsen and Anders Gorm Pedersen similarly calculated that the human coronavirus OC43 had split from bovine coronavirus about 130 years before, approximately coinciding with the pandemic in 1889–1890. The calculation was based on genetic comparisons between bovine coronavirus and different strains of OC43. Their research had not been formally published as of November 2020^[update].

Pathology

Patterns of mortality

The young, the old, and those with underlying conditions were most at risk, and usually died of pneumonia or heart attack caused by physical stress. Unlike most influenza pandemics such as the 1918 flu, primarily elderly people died in 1889. Due to generally lower standards of living, worse hygiene, and poorer standard of medicine, the proportion of vulnerable people was higher than in the modern world.

Notable infections

Deaths

First outbreak

Recurrences

Survivors

See also

• Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company – Case in English contract law, concerning an advertisement of 1891 for a putative flu remedy
• Spanish flu
• Asian flu
• Hong Kong flu
• 2009 swine flu pandemic
• Coronavirus: COVID-19 pandemic

Notes