Influenza Epidemics, HI-10,000

–>37,500 Alvin and Silverstein. Measles and Rubella, 1977, p. 23.[1]

— 10,000 HawaiiHistory.org. Hawai’i Timeline. 1848. Arts & Science. 2013.

— 10,000 Putney. Missionaries in Hawai’i: The Lives of Peter and Fanny Gulick… 2010, p. 93.

— 10,000 Schmitt and Nordyke. “Death in Hawai’i” The Epidemics of 1848-1849.” 2001, 1.[2]

–>10,000 Thrum, Thos. G. The Hawaiian Annual. Honolulu, HI.1896, p. 97.

Narrative Information

Alvin and Silverstein: “Measles struck Hawaii for the first time in 1848, carried by settlers from California. In the epidemic that swept through the islands, one hundred fifty thousand natives became ill. More than a quarter of them died.” (Alvin, Virginia, and Robert Silverstein. Measles and Rubella. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1977, p. 23.)

HawaiiHistory.org: “American warship brings measles to Hilo where it spreads and decimates about a third of the population. Among chiefs who die are Moses Kekuaiwa, William Pitt Leleiohoku and Kaiminaauao. Measles, whooping cough and influenza epidemics wipe out 10,000 people, mostly native Hawaiians.” (HawaiiHistory.org. Hawai’i Timeline. 1848. Arts & Science. 2013.)

Putney: “Measles alone killed around ten thousand Hawaiians in 1849-49…” (Putney, Clifford. Missionaries in Hawai’i: The Lives of Peter and Fanny Gulick, 1797-1883. University of Massachusetts Press, 2010, p. 93.)

Schmitt and Nordyke: “A succession of deadly epidemics struck the Hawaiian Islands during the last four months of 1848 and the early part of 1849. Measles, whooping cough, dysentery, and influenza raged across the kingdom. An estimated 10,000 persons died from these causes, more than one-tenth of the population. In total mortality, the combined 1848-1849 epidemic toll was one of the most devastating in Island history. Curiously, many historians have paid relatively little attention to these tragic events…. (Schmitt and Nordyke 2001, p. 1.)

“The measles was brought from Mazatlan, Mexico, by an American naval frigate, the Independence, making a one-month visit to Hilo. Whooping cough arrived on a ship from California about the same time (some have claimed both diseases were aboard the same ship).[3] Other details regarding the onset of these diseases in Hawai’i—like the identities of the first victims, the total number of cases, death totals for each of the different diseases, and such—are unfortunately missing from the record.

“A letter from the Sandwich Islands Mission, dated May 5, 1849 and published by the Missionary Herald, traced the progress of the epidemics:

During the last four months of 1848, several epidemics have swept over the Islands, some of them simultaneously, others following in quick succession….The [measles] spread with great rapidity; so that in two months it had reached the utmost extremes of the Islands. . . . [W]hole neighborhoods, and even whole villages, prostrate at once with this disease, there not being persons enough in health to prepare food for the sick. Still, advice and medicines did much for the people. The measles soon passed off; and the mortality from this cause was not great.[4]

“The same letter noted the presence of the whooping cough:

This also spread with some rapidity; but it had been in the Islands before….[W]e soon saw it cutting down infants and little children in great numbers in some parts….A large portion of the infants born in the Islands in 1848, even as large a proportion as nine-tenths in some parts, are supposed to be already in their graves.[5] (Schmitt and Nordyke 2001, 2.)

“The next affliction was dysentery:

A diarrhea then succeeded the measles, which affected the great mass of the people….It was caused by a too speedy indulgence in improper food, such as beef, pork, raw fish, and numerous other articles almost equally hurtful. . . and the epidemic raged for many weeks. The dying multiplied around us; and from every part of the Islands, we heard only tidings of suffering and death.[6]

“Although viewed at the time as a separate disease, the rampant diarrhea may have been in reality a symptom of the measles or some other disorder. “In December, the influenza made a sudden attack upon the whole population of the Islands, not sparing the missionaries or their families,” continued the Mission’s letter. The very old as well as the very young suffered: “The aged have almost all disappeared from among us.”[7]…. (Schmitt and Nordyke 2001, 3.)

“Influenza was another infectious disease that had a severe effect on the unprotected Hawaiian race. The “flu” epidemic in 1848-1849 spread rapidly and attacked broadly, transmitted by a filtrable virus. Patients experienced fever, chills, malaise, muscle aching, headaches, and nausea. The illness occurred in waves separated by intermissions. The first wave of three to six week duration was often mild; the second wave lasted longer; and the third bout of infection could continue eight to ten weeks with severe or fatal results.[8]…. (Schmitt and Nordyke 2001, 4.)

“A…serious problem was the reckless reaction of many Hawaiians to their ailments. “Burning with fever, they would rush into the sea for relief, and died by the thousands.”[9]…. (Schmitt and Nordyke 2001, 5.)

“Statistics on the 1848-1849 epidemics—such as number of cases, number of deaths by cause of death, and age, sex, and race of victims, on a month-by-month basis—are either unreliable or totally lacking.

“On March 1, 1849, toward the end of the epidemics (which, incidentally, no one has precisely dated), The Friend ran a brief article titled “Decrease of Polynesian Races.” This article stated, “By the epidemics (whooping cough, measles, and influenza), which have raged among the Hawaiians, during the last 12 months, it is estimated that not less than 10,000 have been swept away or about one-tenth of the population.”[10] No source for this estimate was cited.

“Similar estimates appeared elsewhere. The 1849 census report noted: “It should be borne in mind that last year was the ‘annum mortuum, the year of death! Measles, whooping cough and influenza combined, seemed to sweep the islands with the besom of death. Ten thousand would probably be a low estimate for 1848 and 1849, which those epidemics took away.”[11] Thos. G. Thrum’s Annual later reported, “It was estimated that the population of the islands were [sic] reduced over ten thousand by this siege of epidemics.”[12]

“Samuel M. Kamakau, the native historian, reported an even higher death rate. “In September, 1848, an American warship brought the disease known as measles to Hilo, Hawaii. It spread and carried away about a third of the population.” Kamakau further noted that mortality was especially great among old people, and that the epidemic “spread during 1849 until July when it increased twofold.”[13]

“As recently as 1949, M. A. Taff, Jr., then head of the Territorial Health Department’s vital statistics office, stated that “the [1848-49] measles epidemic alone killed off one-quarter of the native population.”[14]….

“Total population of the kingdom fell from 93,500 at the beginning of 1848 to 84,200 only 24 months later. Deaths from all causes combined numbered 7,943 (as noted, an obvious undercount) in 1848 and 4,320 in 1849. The crude death rate was 88.0 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1848 and 50.5 the following year. Deaths outnumbered births by wide margins in both years. Most of the dead presumably were epidemic victims. Statistics for individual islands vary widely. The 1848 crude death rate ranged from 60.9 per 1,000 population on Ni’ihau to 100.2 on

the Big Island, 104.1 on O’ahu, and 120.2 on Moloka’i—all appallingly high, even by the dismal standards of the mid-19^th century…. (Schmitt and Nordyke 2001, 8-10.)

“The epidemics eventually ended, some time in 1849. What did they leave behind? For one, they left a decimated Hawaiian population far smaller than it had been for many centuries. The 1850 census—a more accurate count than its 1849 predecessor—found only 82,035 unmixed Hawaiians and 558 part Hawaiians, compared with 107,354 natives in 1836 and perhaps 300,000 in 1778….

“In Kane’ohe, the population fell from 4,987 in 1832 to 2,813 in 1849, and in 1848 deaths outnumbered births, 368 to 51.”[15] (Schmitt and Nordyke 2001, 11.)

(Schmitt, Robert C. and Eleanor C. Nordyke. “Death in Hawai’i” The Epidemics of 1848-1849.” Hawaiian Journal of History, Vol. 35, 2001, pp. 1-13.)

Shulman, Shulman and Sims: “….Before 1848 measles was unknown in Hawaii. Several epidemics struck Hawaii in late 1848, beginning with measles and pertussis, then diarrhea and influenza. Measles arrived at this time from California, spreading from Hilo, Hawaii, through all the islands; 19% to 33% of the population died.” (Shulman, Shulman, and Sims. Abstract of “The tragic 1824 journey of the Hawaiian king and queen to London: History of measles in Hawaii.” Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Vol. 28, No. 8, Aug 2009, pp. 728-733.)

Thrum: “Epidemics of 1848-49.

“During the latter four months of 1848 an epidemic of measles, introduced from Mexico in a U.S. Government vessel, raged throughout the islands and laid low one-tenth of the whole population. A writer of the time states that ‘the disease spread with great rapidity, so that in two months it had reached the utmost extremes of the islands. Scarcely a soul escaped its power; whole neighborhoods, and even whole villages were prostrate at once, there not being persons enough in health to prepare food for the sick.

“About the time measles were introduced at one island, the whooping cough, from California, found its way to another and, like the measles, spread with great rapidity, causing almost the total destruction of those born that year.

“Unfortunately an earlier and more than usually severe winter; with excessive rains, aggravated the disease and caused greater mortality. These were succeeded by an epidemic of diarrhea throughout the islands, supposed to have been caused by a too early indulgence of improper food. Scarcely had the people recovered from the foregoing, than the influenza, in December, made a sudden attack on the whole population, native and foreign alike. After so many prostrations by sickness, the people seemed to lose that elasticity of body which resists the power of disease. This epidemic proved the longest and most severe of the kind which had been witnessed up to that time.

“Medical opinion considered the two latter visitations as part and parcel, or after results, of the first or measles epidemic.

“It was estimated that the population of the islands were reduced over ten thousand by this siege of epidemics.” (Thrum, Thos. G. The Hawaiian Annual. “Hawaiian Epidemics.” Honolulu, HI.1896, p. 97.)

Sources

Alvin, Virginia, and Robert Silverstein. Measles and Rubella. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 1977.

HawaiiHistory.org. Hawai’i Timeline. 1848. Arts & Science. 2013. Accessed 1-18-2013 at: http://www.hawaiihistory.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ig.page&year=1848

Putney, Clifford. Missionaries in Hawai’i: The Lives of Peter and Fanny Gulick, 1797-1883. University of Massachusetts Press, 2010. Partially Google digitized. Accessed 1-18-2013 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=Z2ts9ypeRo0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Schmitt, Robert C. and Eleanor C. Nordyke. “Death in Hawai’i” The Epidemics of 1848-1849.” Hawaiian Journal of History, Vol. 35, 2001, pp. 1-13. Accessed 1-18-2013 at: http://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10524/339/jl35007.pdf?sequence=2

Shulman, Stanford T., Deborah L. Shulman, and Ronald H. Sims. Abstract of “The tragic 1824 journey of the Hawaiian king and queen to London: History of measles in Hawaii.” Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Vol. 28, No. 8, Aug 2009, pp. 728-733.)

Thrum, Thos. G. The Hawaiian Annual. Honolulu, HI.1896. Google digitized. Accessed 1-18-2013: http://books.google.com/books?id=h-wKAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

[1] Not used as the high estimate in that it is too out of keeping with other sources and does not cite source.

[2] This estimate is for the last four months and “the early part of 1849” from measles, whooping cough, dysentery and influenza (p. 1). Several sources are cited to support at least 10,000 fatalities.

[3] Cites: Letter of Dr. Dwight Baldwin to Edward B. Robinson, Nov. 17, 1848, HMCD; Francis John Halford, M.D., 9 Doctors & God (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954) pp. 193-194; HG Nov. 13, 1867: {2}.

[4] Cites: Missionary Herald, October 1849, pp. 359-360.

[5] Cites: Missionary Herald, October 1849, p. 360.

[6] Cites: Missionary Herald, October 1849, p. 360.

[7] Cites: Missionary Herald, October 1849, p. 361.

[8] Cites: Emerson, Charles P. Jr. and Jane E. Taylor. Essentials of Medicine (15^th Ed.). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1946, pp. 536-537, p. 569.

[9] Cites: Halford 193-194. See also Mary Atherton Richards, comp., The Chiefs’ Children’s School (Honolulu: privately printed, 1937) 317-318.

[10] Cites: The Friend, March 1, 1849, p. 20.

[11] Cites: The Friend, Nov. 15, 1849, p. 79.

[12] Footnote 28: Anon., “Hawaiian Epidemics,” HAA 1897, p. 97.

[13] Cites: Samuel M. Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii (Revised Edition) (Honolulu: The Kamehameha Schools P, 1992) 236-237,410-411.

[14] Cites: M. A. Taff, Jr., “The Vanishing Race of the Pacific,” PP November 1949: 21.

[15] Cites: Extracts from the Minutes of the General Meeting of the Sandwich Islands Mission, Held at Honolulu, April and May, 1849 11, 12, 14.