{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,30]],"date-time":"2026-07-30T12:41:55Z","timestamp":1785415315670,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":29,"publisher":"Cambridge University Press (CUP)","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,22]],"date-time":"2026-04-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1776816000000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["cambridge.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med. Hist."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,7]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 caused well over fifty million deaths. The epicentre undoubtedly was China, where gene mixing of different virus strains occurred amongst aquatic, migrant birds. But where and when did the virus first infect (or spill over to) a human being? We take, as our starting point, a paper demonstrating that an infection causing the same symptoms as the influenza virus was widespread in New York during the winter of 1917\u20131918. The authors of that paper went on to suggest that the virus had probably reached North America from Europe, in the context of troop movement during World War I. Our own researches have focussed on this point. We show that outbreaks of serious respiratory disease, local in nature but causing unusual patterns of mortality, were indeed reported by scientists and doctors in army hospitals in England and in France, well before the first wave of the pandemic had arrived. We use the records of these hospitals, now held in the National Archives, to trace the progress of this disease amongst the individuals who fell ill. We examine contemporary reactions to this minor epidemic \u2013 an epidemic, we suggest, which acted as a herald wave of the pandemic yet to come. The latter part of our paper addresses the second question, as to how troop movement across the North Atlantic, once the United States had entered into war, may well have enabled the virus to spread from Europe to North America.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1017\/mdh.2025.10053","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,22]],"date-time":"2026-04-22T09:31:39Z","timestamp":1776850299000},"page":"429-448","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/policypage","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The \u2018Spanish\u2019 influenza pandemic: new evidence for influenza outbreaks in England and France prior to 1918"],"prefix":"10.1017","volume":"70","author":[{"given":"Douglas","family":"Gill","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Independent Scholar"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"John","family":"Oxford","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/0574dzy90","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"56","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1201\/b19497"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref17","first-page":"162","volume-title":"Pale Rider, the Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World","author":"Spinney","year":"2017"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/S1473-3099(02)00185-8"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref3","volume-title":"America\u2019s Forgotten 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National Academy of Science"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref20","volume-title":"Diseases of the War","volume":"1","year":"1923"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref10","volume-title":"Le Camp britannique d\u2019Etaples","year":"1997"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref6","first-page":"41","article-title":"Purulent Bronchitis, a Study of Cases Occurring Amongst the British Troops at a Base in France","volume":"190","year":"1917","journal-title":"The Lancet"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0408290102"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref9","volume-title":"Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1826\u20131925","author":"Brown","year":"1955"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref19","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1128\/CMR.00037-06"},{"key":"S0025727325100537_ref13","first-page":"476","volume-title":"Nottinghamshire","author":"Hartwell","year":"2020"}],"container-title":["Medical History"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/services\/aop-cambridge-core\/content\/view\/S0025727325100537","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,17]],"date-time":"2026-06-17T13:36:32Z","timestamp":1781703392000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/product\/identifier\/S0025727325100537\/type\/journal_article"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,22]]},"references-count":29,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,7]]}},"alternative-id":["S0025727325100537"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/mdh.2025.10053","relation":{},"ISSN":["0025-7273","2048-8343"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0025-7273","type":"print"},{"value":"2048-8343","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,22]]},"assertion":[{"value":"\u00a9 The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press","name":"copyright","label":"Copyright","group":{"name":"copyright_and_licensing","label":"Copyright and Licensing"}},{"value":"This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.","name":"license","label":"License","group":{"name":"copyright_and_licensing","label":"Copyright and Licensing"}},{"value":"This content has been made available to all.","name":"free","label":"Free to read"}]}}