Short History of flu

"Of protean diseases," wrote Sir Clifford Albutt, Cambridge Regius Professor of Physic in 1907, "influenza is the most protean." Summing up medical experience of the disease over the long nineteenth century, Albutt`s observation might just as well be a capsule of twentieth century medicine's experience of flu. Observers and sufferers alike have long been perplexed by the bewildering array of forms that flu can take. That flu can at once be a seasonal nuisance, a troublesome epidemic or a vast and potentially devastating pandemic disease has meant that each medical generation is vexed by the same question: what IS flu?


Dr. Bresalier's story starts in the 18th century when the terms influenza was first defined and carries the reader to the present. His global account includes everything from the 1918-19 great Pandemic to the avian flu, latest incarnation of a disease that has ascribed many identities over the years. Exploring the changes and continuities in flu over the last three hundred years illuminates not only the difficulties we have in defining the flu but their social and political consequences in the lives of individuals, in policy making, in the organization and delivery of medical care.

Dr Michael Bresalier is a Teaching Associate and Visiting Fellow at the University of Bristol in the Department of Philosophy. He also teaches on the Medical Humanities BA at Bristol. His PhD is from the University of Cambridge.