I read in the Oct. 8 Columbian, “How does the flu actually kill you?” (by The Mercury News).
My mother, who survived the illness in 1918, said the reason people died was this: They believed that the fever caused the patient to crave water, and they felt that they should deprive the fever of getting what it wanted, and so they withheld fluid. Therefore, patients died from dehydration. Some people did not agree with this assumption; they gave the patient fluids and they survived. It is hard for us to realize now that they had this misunderstanding, but this is what my mother told me. The illness caused her to lose all of her heavy, long hair.
