The Spanish flu and the fiction literature

Abstract

This review focuses on the fictional literature in which the Spanish flu is represented either as an anecdotal or as a historical aspect and the effect on the author or fictional character. We examine this sociocultural period in the press and mainly in Anglo-Saxon literary works and from other countries, including Spanish and Latin American literature that is not very represented in some international reviews on the subject. Also, we include books about the previous and subsequent influenza pandemics to the Spanish flu.

SARS Cov-2 y sus metáforas

“…Otras como la gripe del 18, han tenido mas problemas para emerger con estas metáforas, y en su ensayo "On Being Ill" (1926), Virginia Woolf se lamentaba que la gripe no fuese un tema central en la literatura 5 . Esto tan poco es real, ya que existe una literatura sobre ella, aunque menos conocida, y que ha sido revisada en detalle 2 .…”

Clinical management and supervision of Influenza – systematic review

“…The most virulent influenza pandemic scientifically documented occurred between 1918 and 1920 and swept through Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. The Spanish flu, as the epidemic was called, killed between 50 and 100 million people [1], representing between 3 and 5% of the world's population at the time.…”

Examining the Relationships between the Incidence of Infectious Diseases and Mood Disorders: An Analysis of Data from the Global Burden of Disease Studies, 1990–2019

“…Anecdotal evidence linking respiratory infections and depression antedates the formulation of specific evolutionary or immunological hypotheses by several decades. For example, episodes of depression were observed following influenza and appeared frequently in works of fiction written following outbreaks of this disease [ 60 , 61 ]. These literary observations were supplemented by clinical case reports published in the 1970s and 1980s, linking influenza to the subsequent onset for both MDD and BD [ 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ].…”