A History of Influenza

TTE Book review

Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890―1950 (Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History) 1st ed. 2023. Palgrave Macmillan

Trust the Evidence does not usually write book reviews. However, the Swansea historian Michael Breslier’s hefty and well-researched 476-pager is worth the exception.

Modern Flu “approaches the process of redefining influenza as an example of how aligning different forms of knowledge was integral to creating the identity of a viral disease” in a process he calls viralisation. In modern terms, this means there was a progressive convergence and agreement between pathology, virology, clinical medicine and epidemiology.

Breslier’s massive work worked for me if divided into three main parts. First, the efforts to describe and classify the “most protean disease”. The role of military pathology during and in the aftermath of Spanish influenza, finally, the beginning of virology and virus research culminating in the identification o…