Sacred Heart Hospital, Pensacola, and the Pandemic Flu of 1918
Sacred Heart Hospital had been in operation just three years when the worldwide influenza pandemic reached the city,
taking a toll locally as it did virtually everywhere. Pensacola’s ultimate death total is relatively uncertain; however, the
situation locally, from mid-September 1918 through the end of January, 1919, illustrated what was occurring in one of
the great health care disasters since the bubonic plague of the 1600s.
Treatment problems were compounded by the fact that many of the community’s 40 physicians had been called to
military duty. Adding to the diagnosis and treatment problems was the fact that the initial flu virus mutated to a stronger
strain, resulting in two “waves” of the disease, one beginning in January, 1918, the other in August.
As the illness spread, scientists sought answers as to where the disease began, and how it was spread. Post-pandemic
reports offered many possibilities but few solid answers. Some investigations pointed to China, then Austria as points
of origin. One group believed that the virus was spread by birds. In the late winter, an allied army camp in France was
seen as a point where case numbers suddenly escalated. In the United States, Haskell County, Kansas was an early site of
mass sufferers. Shortly thereafter, the Boston community was affected. As weeks passed, news stories told of pandemic
numbers in the South Sea Islands, India, China, and Africa and especially among the World War I troops fighting in the
trenches in France.
In the United States, Native Americans were heavy victims. In the January phase, the disease seemed to follow normal
influenza routes, affecting the very young and the elderly. But when the second wave came young adults were hardest
hit. Pregnant women were frequent victims.
The term Spanish Influenza came into use by mid-year, giving rise to the belief that Spain had been the point of origin.
However, that theory vanished when researchers found that across the European countries most involved in the
war news was censored so that death totals would not damage morale. As months passed, and the high flu marks of
September and October were noted, the death tolls nation by nation were huge. A single country might have several
hundred thousand deaths! The totals of those afflicted were far higher, and might have grown even worse had medical
science and government become better equipped to prevent the spread.
In Pensacola, the newspapers presented accounts of late September recorded flu results from other cities. One method of prevention being imposed was to avoid public congregations. In Pensacola, the schools, set to open October 1,
remained closed. Mayor Frank Pou urged churches and lodges to suspend their gatherings. Motion picture movies shut
down. Into October physicians were reporting scores of telephone calls per day from patients seeking aid. Employees of
the Telephone Company and street car services were becoming ill thus both services were reduced. At the Aeronautical
Station, where by 1918 there were over 6,000 in uniform, case numbers grew. (At the Navy facility, by the pandemic’s
end, more than 1,600 had been hospitalize at the new (1917) hospital; twenty five had died.)
Just about everything was affected, the Red Cross, which had opened in Pensacola in 1917, established a service to deliver food to the home bound. Volunteer nurses from other communities came to assist, as did physicians. A young Panama
City physician arrived to help; he too sickened and died.
Some of the city’s thirteen pharmacies were at the point of closure when the navy provided several men to assist. Day by
day the newspaper printed overall accounts of numbers. On October 9th the story said that twenty-two had been reported dead the prior day. By month’s end the death total here was 171. The military cancelled draft call ups.
At Sacred Heart Hospital, the happenings paralleled what was occurring nationally in the flu’s second phase. Through the
summer there had been some admissions with the diagnosis “flu”. But then, in September, the term Spanish Influenza
was found on the records pages. Through September the Hospital’s case influenza diagnosis totaled twenty-seven. The
numbers rose in October with 130 flu cases recorded. As one observer noted “…the majority of patients admitted in that
month were influenza. In November the Sacred Heart total dropped to nineteen; in January it soared again, to thirty-six.
But then, happily, the flu admissions ceased.”
Hospital staff suffered too. In an interview later Mrs. Marguerite Skotsky, a student nurse then in training at Sacred Heart,
said that at one point in late 1918, only six nurses were well and able to care for the 101 patients in the house! She noted
too that therapeutic measures such as oxygen and intravenous fluids were not available. “We did the best we could,” she
said.
A Sacred Heart Hospital report written in 1924 added this: “During the influenza epidemic when the grim destroyer
stalked through the city and country, exacting its fearful toll of life and health, the hospital was a haven of refuge for the
stricken. Day and night, many were brought in, no one was refused. With the assistance of volunteer lay workers, all
were cared for. The Hospital Corps had the gratification of seeing the largest percentage of its patients return to their
homes.”
When the final accounts of the pandemic were prepared, it was all but impossible to itemize the world-wide total stricken or the number of deaths. By some estimates, as many as one-third of the world’s population was sickened, and that
on average, 10-20 percent of the sickened died. The projection therefore was that from 3 percent to 6 percent of the
world’s population perished which projections put at from fifty to one hundred million.
Coming as it did during wartime the Spanish flu put unbelievable strain on care providers.