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NEILLSVILLE WOMAN REMEMBERS 1918 FLU PANDEMIC
Friday, May 1st, 2009 -- 1:46 pm
Posted by Riley Hebert-News Director
At this stage, the Swine Flu is not nearly as deadly as the 1918 Flu Pandemic that swept over the globe.
While we have 5 probable cases of Swine Flu in Wisconsin right now, the outbreak of Spanish Influenza claimed somewhere between 20 million and 100 million lives.
Clara Hemp, 101, remembers it well. Now a resident of the Memorial Medical Center Health and Rehab Facility, Clara contracted the Spanish Flu when she was about 10 years old.
"A lot of people got sick," Hemp told us Friday, "I didn't go to school for two weeks I felt so bad. I ached all over."
The world of medicine has come a long way. Hemp received some unusual treatments back then.
"They had salted pork that they put around your neck. They put it in a stocking," Hemp remembers laughing. "I suppose it was an old German custom."
But, as she notes, it must have worked. "I'm still living," she jokes.
Another remedy often employed back in those days was something called a “whiskey sling."
"They gave you some hot water with whiskey in it, and then you'd go to bed," she says.
Her daughter has been keeping her informed of the current Swine Flu pandemic.
She says, simply, “it’s not good.”
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