Abstract
Influenza is the paradigm of a pandemic disease, an original exemplar. Before the nineteenth century, the term pandemic, meaning “all people,” rarely referred to diseases of any sort. Instead, it most often appeared as a critical description of social mores deemed vulgar and common. As Mark Harrison points out, the modern concept of pandemic disease took shape when both medical and lay observers followed the spread of the so-called Russian flu around the world during the years 1889–91.¹ During the Russian flu, news correspondents telegraphed reports that helped readers—and health officials—to track the spread of influenza outbreaks