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Phil Elliott Kathy Morrison’s uncle, died of Spanish Flu in 1918. His family would go on to name another son Phil after his passing, [contributed photo]BURIEDFrom Page AiKathy doesn't know many details - “I didn't hear this story until I was at least an adult, she said, Mom led off with, ‘Well, I died when I was a baby,’ and obviously Toni wouldn't have remembered the event herself. But at some point Toni’s mother saw her move. She survived that flu, and the family moved to California where she would ultimately work for what is now Blue Diamond almonds in Sacramento. She was a tomboy growing up - “she would be out playing sports with the boys, and she had an uncle who would tell her mother, ‘Don’t let her go out there playing with the boys,’” Kathy said. Toni died in 2013 at the age of 95.My ongoing obsession with the Spanish flu - and I promise, maybe, that I won't write about it here again - has brought me another interesting bit of trivia.I have mentioned that October was the deadliest month of the flu - but itsmortality rate might have been helped along by, of all things, aspirin. This, from History.com:Aspirin was first trademarked by the German-owned company of Bayer in 1899. Losing its patent by expiration in 1917, pretty much every company was turning the stuff out.Doctors of the day had little understanding of flu and vir -tually no medicine to treat it, so as an educated guess the U. S. Surgeon General and the Journal of the American Medical Association all advised prescribing heavy doses of the stuff. Doctors were advising their patients to take up to 30 grams per day.If you’re a pharmacist or doctor, you might be squirming at reading that. Today, any asprin over 4 grams is considered unsafe.So patients who were suffering from the flu were now also suffering from aspirin poisoning - including hyperventilation and the buildup of fluid in the lungs which, like the flu itself, ended up suffocating the lungs’ owners.Contact Bill at 252-229-4977 or bill.hand@ newbernsj.com
Newspaper Details
Sun Journal
New Bern, North Carolina, US
Mon, May 18, 2020
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 12 Oct 2023
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