Interviews: Chris Driggs | Phillip Earl | Ann Howard | Bob Kent | Elizabeth Raymond | Guy Rocha

Phillip Earl
Historian

Q: When does influenza reach Nevada?

PE: The first cases were reported in the United States in March of 1918 and this was at mid-western military camps, Calvary camps and like that. And what happened was that the soldiers who became sick at that time within a short period of time of course this was during the war, this was during the war, and they moved around, they went over seas, they were packed in troop ships. And the virus mutated and the virus spread in France and then in Germany and then spread throughout the world from there. And then soldiers brought it back and then it again mutated when they began, you know, when soldiers began coming back in April and into the summer of 1918. And the flu spread to Spain and Portugal, but particularly Spain. And Spain was a neutral. And Spain didn't censor the press the way that the French and Germans and Russians did. And journalists began calling it the Spanish Influenza, and this is where the name came from, came from. And by early summer there were reported outbreaks of flu at military installations and cities back east that were near military installations. And the first cases that we have in Nevada are October, the first week in October 1918. And it was very intense from October through the end of the year. And then continued on into 1919. And I found deaths in Nevada as late as June and July of 1919. But it was pretty well over but there were still deaths, particularly January, February, March of 1919.

Q: So the flu spread through Nevada east to west?

PE: It really spread from west to east. I mean from the east to the west. It spread along railroad corridors, where railroads were and this was the case with the Central Pacific and the Western Pacific. And it also spread to Las Vegas because there's a railroad that connection there. And it spread to central Nevada, Tonopah and Goldfield because of the railroad connections there, as there as well. And they thought it spread from personal contact. You know people sneezing and coughing and that sort of thing. And this is one of the reason that nationally they advised flu masks. And they thought that this would in some way interrupt the virus and people wouldn't be sneezing directly on each other. And there was no real scientific evidence or medical evidence that flu masks did much good.

Q: There were calls to close Nevada's border to stop the infection.

PE: There were calls to close the border and inspect trains. And that's a problem because states cannot interrupt the commerce between the states. And that would have meant a legal problem so it was never done. But there were proposals to establish like quarantine stations at the entrance to Nevada like at Truckee, California or maybe at Salt Lake City from the railroad coming from the east but that was never done.

Q: How did Governor Boyle juggle all this?

PE: Governor Boyle is, of course, just a politician. I think he was originally an engineer. And he knew nothing to do for it. And even the medical officials, they didn't know what to do. And apparently what happened was that the flu, when they got the Spanish Influenza, the flu, they would have it for about 2 or 3 days, their temperature would peak, and then it would go down and then they would seemed to get better. But I think what the flu did is that it simply weakened the immune system and left them open for pneumonia. And within a very few hours or maybe a day or so of seeming to get over the flu they would come down, come down with pneumonia. And it was referred to in the medical reports as post influenza pneumonia. And this is what they died from. Because when the used to do autopsy on people that died from the flu they'd take the lungs out, and the lungs were just saturated with water. And this is what happened with pneumonia. So people really died of pneumonia. But I think a lot of people died simply because the virus weakened their system weak anyway. They may have had heart trouble. They may have had other conditions, weak constitutions, whatever that is. Or they may have been pregnant. A lot of women died during childbirth, for example, and the child died also. And these women were women that had the flu. Sometimes this would be put down as post-influenza complications. And sometimes they'd put it down as complications from childbirth. Same with someone who died of heart disease. Maybe the flu simply exacerbated that and made it worse. And when they filled out the death certificate they put down heart disease. Or they put down some other ailment that they could have died from rather than the flu. And this is the reason that I think the official casualty figures in Nevada were something over 3,000 cases and of those they had 754 that died, died of either the flu or post-influenza pneumonia. And I think that might have been pushed up to more than 800 if they included pregnant women and their new babies that died, that really died of the flu or flu complications. And they were listed as complications of birth.

Q: There was a letter to the governor about 6 out of every 1,000 people are dying. But the official figure of 700 makes it more like 1 out of a 1,000.

PE: Exactly. Well, people on the ground, they see death every day. I talked to a guy in Tonopah. And he was about 8 or 10 years old at that time. And the family home was right across the street from the funeral home. And he said that they were just bringing them in by the wagonloads. And that was his impression as a little kid, and stacking coffins and that sort of thing. And as a matter of fact his dad had a drege or a teamster business there, and his dad helped haul, you know, coffins to the cemetery, like that.