People being inoculated against the "Spanish Flu" in Australia in 1919.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20
On June 18, 1918, German gunner Herbert Sulzbach noted that “there is an epidemic on, what they call Spanish ’flu, so that even leave has been stopped”. It’s a throwaway war diary line about a virus that ultimately killed more people than the Great War itself. The war is estimated to have killed about 18 million (though that number must be greater when those who died later from the consequences of the war are taken into account), but the influenza pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million in the years from 1918 to 1920. Sydneysider Eric…