Modern Flu

Michael Bresalier is Lecturer in the History of Medicine and co-director of the Medical Humanities Research Centre at Swansea University, in the UK.

• Chapter 1. Introduction. Historicising Flu: Viral Identities of Influenza.- Chapter 2. Naming Flu: Classification and its Conflicts.- Chapter 3. Modernising Flu: Re-Aligning Medical Knowledge of the ‘Most Protean Disease’.- Chapter 4. Fighting Flu: Military Pathology and the 1918-19 Pandemic.- Chapter 5. Mobilising Flu: The Pandemic and the Genesis of British Medical Virus Research.- Chapter 6. Modelling Flu: Dog Distemper and the Promise of Virus Research.- Chapter 7. Viralising Flu: Towards a New Medical Consensus.- Chapter 8. Globalising Flu: Systems of Surveillance and Vaccination.- Chapter 9. Conclusion: ‘The Most Protean Disease’.- Chapter 10. CODA: Influenza and Covid-19

“Modern Flu is an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on influenza and influenza pandemics. The strength of the manuscript is in detailing the formative process of research that evolved from the failure of the bacteriological model for influenza, but one that prepared the way for a virological way of knowing the flu.” (George Dehner, Social History of Medicine, April 22, 2024)