Dr. White's vaccine helps to calm nerves

Image: Police in Seattle (1918)

“In fact, the influenza situation never looked better. The medical profession now had a flu vaccine to offer, and with it the hope that influenza would soon be as much under control as smallpox… It was distributed free to hundreds of doctors, who began to innoculate thousands of Philadelphians immediately. Newspapers reported that the theory underlying this vaccine was the same as that of a vaccine used in a recent epidemic of polio in the city.

There was to be no effective vaccine against polio for another generation, and a really effective vaccine against influenza is still to be produced, but Doctor White’s vaccine served another purpose… it helped to calm nerves..”     

Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic (p. 84)