Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950

Ninety years after the discovery of the human influenza virus, Modern Flu explores the history of this breakthrough and its implications for understanding and controlling influenza. It argues that influenza's viral identity was rooted in the development of medical virus research and virological ways of knowing that grew out of two influenza pandemics, two world wars, and state-sponsored programs to modernize British medicine. Collaboration, conflict, and exchange between researchers, medical professionals, and governmental bodies forged a new medical consensus on the identity and nature of influenza, shedding new light on the modern history of the epidemic disease.

Format: Hardback
Length: 458 pages
Publication date: 10 September 2023
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Ninety years after the discovery of the human influenza virus, Modern Flu delves into the history of this groundbreaking breakthrough and its profound implications for understanding and controlling influenza since then. It explores the journey of how influenza was initially defined as a viral disease in the early 1900s, contending that its viral identity did not emerge abruptly with the discovery of the first human influenza virus in 1933. Rather, it was rooted in the development of medical virus research and virological ways of knowing that grew out of a half-century of changes and innovations in medical science shaped by two influenza pandemics, two world wars, and state-sponsored programs to scientifically modernize British medicine. A series of transformative processes, in which virological ideas and practices were aligned with and incorporated into medicine and public health, laid the foundation for the viralization of influenza in the 1930s and 1940s. Collaboration, conflict, and exchange between researchers, medical professionals, governmental bodies, institutions, philanthropies, and medical scientific and public health bodies played pivotal roles in this process. This book serves as a comprehensive history of how virus researchers, clinicians, epidemiologists, medical scientific and public health bodies, and institutions, along with philanthropies in Britain, the USA, and beyond, forged a new medical consensus on the identity and nature of influenza. By shedding new light on the modern history of influenza, it provides a timely account of how ways of knowing and controlling this intractable epidemic disease became viral.

Weight: 738g
Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781137339539
Edition number: 1st ed. 2023