Historical Review: Novel Therapeutics in the 1919 Influenza Epidemic

Abstract

Many pandemic public health responses, including mask mandates and social restrictions, remain unchanged in the last century. There remains little robust research into the unintended socioeconomic effects of restrictions. International travel restrictions delayed the onset of the epidemic in Australia, but isolationism was eventually suspended and the pandemic emerged as travel recommenced. Specific therapeutics were sometimes bizarre and lacked therapeutic trials. Practitioners and companies seeking to profit from the pandemic remained a constant across the pandemic outbreaks, however the main form of therapies were elixirs and experimental vaccines.