Editors Note: This is the first installment of a two-part series detailing the Spanish Influenza and its ties to Athens County and Ohio. This first installment highlights the life and efforts of a man who lived in Athens for a time and had an unexpected role in the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. The next installment, to be printed in a future edition, will detail the responses Athens County had to the influenza pandemic in 1918 and 1919, as well as the responses of other leaders in the state during the time.

An Ohio University graduate of yesteryear played a role in identifying the aggressive virus that may have triggered the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.

Dr. Loring Miner is credited by many health officials and historians as the discoverer of the 1918 flu epidemic, more popularly known as the Spanish Flu.

The physician was practicing medicine in Haskell County, located west of Dodge City in Kansas. The Ohio University graduate began his practice in the Kansas county in 1885.

Haskell County was a far cry from his previous home of Athens, Ohio. His practice expanded hundreds of miles over the frontier. Miner seemed to have enjoyed the change in scenery, however, and became rather embedded in the community.

According to author John M. Barry, who wrote about Dr. Miner in his book The Great Influenza, Miner served as the countys coroner for a time, as well as county health officer and as a chair in the countys chapter of the Democratic Party.

Aside from that, he also was a businessman, owning a grocery store and a drug store, both of which he fully expected his patients to frequent.

Miner was described by author John M. Barry as being a large, gruff man with an affinity for alcohol, but a skilled physician nonetheless.

Miner witnessed an unforgiving virus overtaking young men in his area, with symptoms that included a severe headache, a high fever and a non-productive cough, with the first patient of this kind appearing in January of 1918. According to Barry, Miner ultimately diagnosed the virus as influenza, but the doctor soon noticed the virus was progressing rapidly, and patients who normally would have a speedy recovery healthy young men were dying. He saw cases of this severe flu pop up in different parts of Haskell County.

Miner was thorough in his approach to gaining an understanding of the aggressive virus he had witnessed in many of his patients, Barry wrote. He conducted lab studies, searched through medical journals and had consultations with colleagues to gain clarity. He also utilized available vaccines, such as the tetanus shot, in hopes of stimulating the immune system of infected people.

This time of intense research was tough on the doctor. Barry found in an interview published in a Kansas magazine that Dr. Miner often slept on his way home from his doctor visits for the day while his trusty horse pulled him along the quiet Kansas roads.

Miner ultimately was the first person to report this aggressive virus, thought to be an early strain of the Spanish Flu, to the U.S. Public Health Service.

No other reports were submitted to the U.S. Public Health Service in regards to this influenza of a severe type, as Miner described it, for another six months.

At the time, influenza was not considered a reportable disease, nor was it a disease that health officials tracked, Barry wrote. Diseases that were often reported to the U.S. Public Health Service included polio, diphtheria, measles, mumps, scarlet fever and smallpox.

Kansas was also home to Camp Funston at Fort Riley, which housed roughly 56,000 troops at that time.

Nearly 500 soldiers were hospitalized in the span of a week as they started falling ill with symptoms identical to what Miner had seen earlier that year. The troops from this camp were later mobilized to Europe during WWI, where they likely brought the disease with them. In theory, troops who came home likely brought the virus back to the States, this time stronger and mutated, Barry wrote.

Miners former home of Athens County also saw deaths linked to the Spanish Flu. Oddly enough, an outbreak at a nearby military camp also was the root of many cases of the virus in Athens County.

Ohio History Connection curator Karen Robertson found in her recent research of Ohios various responses to the Spanish Flu that Ross County became a hotspot for the virus.

More than 1,000 men died at Camp Sherman before the epidemic ended in 1919, according to Ohio History Connection.

Ohios historical society also noted that Camp Sherman was affected more by the epidemic than any other training camp in the nation.

Robertson noted that nearly 6,000 troops at Camp Sherman, however, fell ill with the Spanish Flu. Super flu symptoms popped up in the camp beginning that summer, progressing rapidly into the fall of 1918.

As the death count rose locally, the nearby Majestic Theatre in Chillicothe was used as a temporary morgue, Robertson found. Nurses were reportedly stacking bodies on top of one another like cordwood, and the fluids from the corpses flowed into a neighboring alleyway. This alley is still referred to as Blood Alley, Robertson said.

In Athens County specifically, several families with relatives who were at Camp Sherman became infected with the Spanish Flu.

One Congress Run household was infected after the familys son returned from Camp Sherman on furlough but developed the disease as soon as he arrived at home and his condition was serious for several days, but was in recovery, according to the Oct. 8, 1918 edition of The Athens Messenger.

Other more isolated cases in the county were also reported in the Glouster area, in Bishopville and in Mountville, according to several editions of The Athens Messenger. The Messenger provided daily updates in regards to area residents falling ill to the Spanish Flu, recovering or dying.

In nearby Hocking County, a Murray City woman died of complications that resulted from the Spanish Flu. She had been at Camp Sherman weeks prior to her passing, and reportedly fell ill shortly after returning from the military camp in Ross County.

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Miner, man of medicine and Ohio University grad, played research role in 1918 epidemic - Athens NEWS