This photograph was taken in Cincinnati, Ohio and shows a poster in a trolley car window encouraging the practice of keeping windows open to prevent the spead of the Spanish Influenza. This practice of keeping windows open was nationwide. The Spanish Influenza did much to slow up war progress in the United States.
Scientists, doctors, and health officials could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, eluding treatment and defying control. Some victims died within hours of their first symptoms. Others succumbed after a few days; their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death. The flu did not discriminate. It was rampant in urban and rural areas, from the densely populated East coast to the remotest parts of Alaska. Young adults, usually unaffected by these types of infectious diseases, were among the hardest hit groups along with the elderly and young children. The flu afflicted over 25 percent of the U.S. population.
