
01/29/2025
More reports from the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918-19...
Physicians treating patients in the same city - as reported by Dr. H. H. Crum of Ithaca, New York:
“I had three hundred cases with one death. One good homeopathic doctor had two hundred and seventy-five cases and no deaths [0.17% mortality for the combined outcome from these two homeopathic physicians]. I (Dr. Crum) am the health officer for the city of Ithaca and had all cases reported to me. In October and November 1918, twenty-four hundred cases of influenza were reported. Seventy-five died [3% mortality for the combined homeopathic and allopathic outcomes].
Of the twenty-four hundred cases, between 900 and 1,000 were Cornell students, eight hundred of them belonging to the army. They were students of military tactics and all of them were cared for by (allopathic) army doctors. They were hospital cases. The dormitories were turned into hospitals. The treatment was entirely allopathic. Students of the army class were healthy but, even so, forty-five of the seventy-five deaths occurred among those nine hundred students [5% mortality].
Private patients fared much better. In going over the records of deaths, I found that I had but one death while the old school man next to me, who has patients of the same class as mine, had fifteen deaths among the same number of cases. Think of it! Two hundred and ninety-four cases with fifteen deaths! [5% mortality] … There are other homeopaths in Ithaca and we feel that we have a right to be proud of losing so few patients.”
Source: T. O. Barnhill. Discussion: Influenza: a favorable mortality and publicity. Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy 1919-1920; 12: 595.