
God be with you till we meet again (1918) - portobello
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2020/03/god-be-with-you-till-we-meet-again.html
======
Insanity
Question, about this part of the letter: "I have four day nurses and five
night nurses (female) a ward-master, and four orderlies".

Does anyone know why it was important to point out they were female? Were army
nurses typically male?

Anyways, I'm reading about the 1918 flu a lot lately and came upon parts of
this text multiple times. I'm still not sure if it's making me more or less
paranoid about Covid-19, but it's definitely fascinating.

~~~
DoreenMichele
This gives me a cert warning, but it quotes something in a way that implies
that may have been sort of the formal designation: Nurses Corps (female)

[https://history.amedd.army.mil/ANCWebsite/articles/malenurse...](https://history.amedd.army.mil/ANCWebsite/articles/malenurses.html)

I've googled around a bit and when Florence Nightingale did her thing, it was
mostly male nurses in the military. By early 1900s, this had changed, at least
in the US, and most nurses were female.

~~~
Insanity
Thanks, I suppose that might have been why indeed!

------
Merrill
> It is salutary to remember that we do not really understand why the
> devastating pandemic of 1918-19 was so severe, and that we cannot therefore
> be confident that our modern medical measures would succeed against a
> similar future challenge.

From the introduction to the letter in the British Medical Journal published
1979.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1599810/pdf/brm...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1599810/pdf/brmedj00105-0026.pdf)

This still seems to be the case for Covid-19.

~~~
i_am_new_here
Could it be that very dangerous viruses emerge more often, but only when they
fall on "(very) fertile ground", that they then spread? The WW1-circumstances
(a lot of men together on small space and harsh conditions) have contributed a
lot, that the "spanish flu" spread, while others did not spread and so never
became known to us ?

~~~
CaptArmchair
Here's a study that exactly goes into your question:

[https://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/epi/oxford05.pdf](https://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/epi/oxford05.pdf)

The conclusion of that article is that the basic lessons we learn today, were
- in part - learned in 1918...

Back then, researchers had already traced the emergence of outbreaks to an
encampment in France where men and animals were living in close quarters and
unsanitary conditions.

As to the first part of your question, the answer is that more people
encroaching on the animal and wildlife territory while not adhering to basic
sanitary practices will increase the chance of new strains appearing and
making the jump to humans.

Vox did an excellent video on how this works for Corona:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54)

Such events do not only happen in China in particular but they can happen
virtually anywhere in the world.

Another ongoing pandemic is HIV/AIDS. Well, it is generally accepted that the
jump to humans occurred in West-Africa in the 1920's. But it took time and
globalization - increasing mobility - before HIV finally spread across the
world:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS)

~~~
SCM-Enthusiast
May be a complete digression but it's much easier for me to believe the virus
escaped from Wuhan Virology Institute than made the jump from a fish market.

------
prox
I found a newspaper message from the 19th century that described a flu that
gave pneumonia and undertakers hadn’t seen anything like it since the Cholera
epidemics, this article was from Spain around 1840’s.

~~~
ekianjo
do you have a copy?

~~~
prox
I have, but it is old Dutch. Don’t know if that is of help... I am still going
through the archives for older mentions.

~~~
gbrits
Facinating. There's a lot of Dutch people here. Some might want to translate

~~~
vincentmarle
Old Dutch is actually a lot like Old English, they’re both sister languages.
Supposedly speakers of those languages were able to (mostly) understand each
other, similarly to a dialect.

~~~
ori_b
Old English is not similar enough to English for English speakers to
understand, so this isn't particularly helpful.

[https://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/hel/orosius.html](https://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/hel/orosius.html)

[https://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/hel/chron.html](https://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/hel/chron.html)

------
JohnJamesRambo
Does anyone know what happened to the doctor? Did he make it out ok?

~~~
WilTimSon
This would be quite hard to discover bar someone having access to army records
of that time or having a family connection, I think. Not only has more than a
century passed, there's also the issue of the letter simply being signed
"(Sgd) Roy". Roy isn't that uncommon of a first or last name.

One fact that could help the search is in this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703434)

If, indeed, the Burt that the letter is addressed to has the surname Bouell or
worked with someone named Bouell, that could help narrow things down
substantially. If Burt is found, the Roy in question could be found as well.

------
daotoad
Just a usage note for grammar/spelling obsessed. Is the usage of _till_
correct? Yes it is.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%27til](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/%27til)

~~~
axaxs
Thanks for sharing. I'm a complete etymology nerd and myself had no idea.

------
david_draco
What does "Keep the Bouells open" mean?

~~~
emmelaich
KYBO is a common acronym in Scouting.

"Keep Your Bowels Open"

Whether Bouells is a typo or pun I don't know.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
But what does it mean/come from?

~~~
throwanem
It literally means to make sure you avoid getting constipated.

------
yingw787
So, going beyond the depressing, I think one good thing that will come out of
all this since this situation isn't experienced in any of our lifetimes
(including our elders) we have to reach back to history to find comparisons.
Maybe this will spark a curiosity in history!

There's a number of really great history channels on YouTube; I particularly
like "The Armchair Historian".

~~~
favorited
An historian on Twitter suggested people should keep journals of how COVID-19
affects their everyday lives.

I've been doing it as a method of self-reflection, and found it really
valuable. I end up not just enumerating the changes to my life, but exploring
how I am responding to them, trying to describe how they're affecting me
emotionally, etc.

It's just for me, so I don't worry about missing days or being dramatic, or
writing in an organized manner. But it's been really interesting, and not at
all the chore I expected.

~~~
yingw787
I'm doing something similar too! Morning / afternoon / evening pages on my
personal blog: [https://blog.yingw787.com](https://blog.yingw787.com)

I don't think I've ever shared my personal blog before, it's my personal
scratchpad as opposed to my professional content on Bytes by Ying, but if it
helps people understand how one rando on the Internet processes emotions
during this time, maybe I can do some good.

------
tomjuggler
Of similar historical interest is "A journal of the plague year" about the
great plague in London.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journal_of_the_Plague_Year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journal_of_the_Plague_Year)

The book is free to read on project Gutenberg.

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm)

------
hi41
I find the language very beautiful. How come we don’t write like this anymore?
Where does one learn to speak like that? We don’t see beautiful language on
emails.

------
0x8BADF00D
Strange how nature works sometimes. An arrangement of proteins sheathed by a
layer of lipids can kill billions of people.

~~~
saati
That's what we all are.

~~~
glouwbug
Proteins killing proteins at the macro and micro level

------
purplezooey
damn... staff of 7-8 and 168 beds. that's a biblical scene.

------
Dahoon
The Spanish flu from Kansas.

~~~
Kye
I wonder if, like with the 1918 pandemic, we'll find later that the first
cases were somewhere other than China, but that place was better at keeping it
under wraps.

~~~
triangleman
A shrimp vendor at the Wuhan seafood market reported symptoms starting Dec.
10, so unless someone finds earlier cases elsewhere, I think that's as good a
place as any to call the starting point.

[https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-
problems/cor...](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-
problems/coronavirus-patient-zero-at-wuhan-seafood-market-identified/news-
story/2d6706018d09b7daa4567521f8cae3e3)

~~~
chrisco255
[https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-investigators-
one-...](https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-investigators-one-step-
closer-to-solving-mystery-of-patient-zero) Reports of a 70+ year old that had
the disease on Nov. 17th. Patient zero probably originated in October or
thereabouts, and was probably never tested for it.

~~~
lonelappde
Better article:
[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-
chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back)

But website has a touch of ad cancer.

