Pandemic on the Prairie Kara Heitz

The invisible line that runs through the middle of Kansas City may be an important political boundary, but in 1918, like today, diseases do not respect these human divides. This episode compares the Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO responses to the flu pandemic, including differences in business closures, compliance, and other “social distancing” measures. We’ll also look at the politics behind these differences, especially the operations of the Kansas City, MO democratic political machine...

Samuel Crumbine was a physician and public health pioneer known throughout Kansas and the nation for his evidence-based methods of promoting food safety, sanitation, and combating communicable diseases. Many Kansans may still tread on his “Don’t Spit on the Sidewalk” bricks or have heard his catchy “swat the fly” campaign. he also helped Kansas navigate the 1918-1920 flu pandemic as secretary of health. But Crumbine has a “darker” legacy of supporting eugenics policies that imprisoned women i...

Kansas is home to Haskell Indian Nations University, today the premier institution of higher education for Native Americans in the United States. However, Haskell has a long and complicated history, including experiencing two deadly outbreaks of the 1918 influenza pandemic (as told in Episode 3). In this mini-episode, we talk with Prof. Eric Anderson, chair of the Indigenous and American Indian Studies Department at Haskell Indian Nations University and an expert on the history of the institu...

Just weeks after the March 1918 “first wave” flu outbreak at Camp Funston, the Haskell Institute in Lawrence saw a similar rash of influenza infections. Around one-third of the Native American students were hospitalized, and 17 died. In this episode, we’ll talk to historian Mikaëla Adams about this early outbreak of the 1918 flu at the Haskell Institute. And we’ll examine the larger context of Indian boarding schools in the U.S. and the failure of public health programs for Native Americans. ...

In this mini-episode, we tell the story of Dr. Loring Miner, a physician in Haskell County in southwest Kansas who, in early 1918, may have encountered the first outbreak of the flu pandemic. Dr. Miner was a little different than the stereotypical country doctor. Dr. Miner was "gruff" and one who "didn't suffer fools," but he also was extremely dedicated to his practice, traveling over hundreds of square miles to attend to patients. He loved the classics and read the great works of Greek lite...

Did the deadly 1918-1920 influenza pandemic begin in Kansas? While this pandemic is often called the “Spanish flu”, there is a strong possibility it originated in Camp Funston, a training camp for WWI recruits at Fort Riley. We will follow the paper trail to trace the origins of this theory. So how did it get to Camp Funston? To help answer this question, we’ll talk with historian John Barry about his work on the Kansas origins of the flu pandemic. Finally, we’ll explore the question of why a...