Note: Please check to see if this topic is too document-heavy for your class. If your students struggle with reading comprehension, we recommend reading these materials out loud together and focusing more on class discussion.
How do people get information during pandemics?
Summary: In this lesson, your students will look at primary sources from the influenza pandemic to think about how information is shared during pandemics.
Start by presenting a summary of the introduction to your students, then follow the lesson instructions
below.
Introduction
What is a pandemic?
It’s likely that your life recently changed due to something silent and invisible–a pandemic. A pandemic is a disease that does not impact just one area but spreads across the whole world. Did you have to stay home from school? Stand six feet away from your friends? Wear a mask in a store? This is because of the pandemic.
The coronavirus is a virus, or a germ that can make you sick. Some viruses have treatments that stop them from hurting people. Others don’t yet. Some viruses without treatment spread so quickly that they become pandemics.
Mainers have faced pandemics before. Pandemics come in different shapes and sizes depending on the type of virus. Sometimes, older people are most at risk. Sometimes it’s more dangerous for children. Different pandemics affect people in different ways, like coughing, fever, and difficulty walking. Pandemics are dangerous because they cause many deaths in a short period of time. They stop either naturally or when people find a cure.
Vocabulary below for teacher use.
Vocabulary:
- Pandemic: A disease that does not impact just one area but spreads across the whole world.
- Virus: A germ that can get inside your body and make you sick.
Distribute primary source images and have your students look at them before you read aloud about the tuberculosis pandemic.
Influenza
The influenza pandemic, which is often referred to as the “Spanish flu,” was the worst pandemic in recent history. Its outbreak lasted only one and a half years, from 1918 to 1920. However, it infected one in every three people in the world. Like during the coronavirus pandemic, people wore masks. Many public buildings like schools were closed.
The Spanish flu came in waves, or time periods in which the virus was worse. The first wave was milder. However, the second and third waves were extremely deadly even to healthy, young people. Patients died within hours or days of developing symptoms like blue skin and suffocation. Soldiers fighting in World War I were more likely to get influenza. This was certainly the case for Mainers. Half of the Mainers that died during World War I died from influenza, not fighting in the war.
During the influenza pandemic, people learned information about the flu from lots of different sources. These included newspapers, posters, announcements and speeches, as well as talking to friends and families.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1918_Spanish_Flu.png,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1918_at_Spanish_Flu_Ward_Walter_Reed_(cropped).jpg
Tuberculosis
The global tuberculosis (TB) pandemic occurred during the 1800s and 1900s. When the bacteria that causes TB was discovered in 1882, one in seven Americans died from this virus. TB mainly attacks the lungs and can spread through shared air. Tuberculosis patients develop bloody, mucousy coughs, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever, and night sweats.
TB broke out in Maine in the first half of the 1900s. Patients were treated away from their homes in places called “sanatoriums.” Sanatoriums were built in areas with lots of open space and fresh air, away from cities. Sanatoriums were also far away from other people so that patients didn’t get their friends and families sick. Staying in a sanatorium cost money and meant you couldn’t work to support your family, which placed a burden on poor and middle-class families.
The Western Maine Sanatorium in Hebron opened in 1904 and treated thousands of tuberculosis patients over the course of weeks, months, and years. Patients received medical treatment such as fresh air, careful diets, and regulated exercise. The sanatorium was originally privately-run, but was transferred to ownership by the Maine government in 1915 due to financial challenges. When the state government ran the facility, patient bills were limited to $5 a week. Wealthier Mainers could afford to go to private sanatoriums that were more like resorts. The Western Maine Sanatorium closed in 1959 due to new drug treatments and a larger movement away from state-operated treatment institutions.
The Lesson:
- Students look at the primary sources and complete an Analysis Worksheet for each one, using only information from the source itself. If they are not ready for analysis and writing, this can be completed as a class or small group.
- Discuss the source as a class. What did you learn from them? What questions do you have? How does the source connect to the theme?
- Present source label information to the students. Were you surprised by what you learned?
- Optional: use the recommended activity prompts and reflection questions for further discussion.
Optional Activity:
Brainstorm five ways that you have learned about the coronavirus pandemic. These should be five different sources of information. They can include people, written sources like books, newspapers, and signs, or media like websites, TV news, or social media–just to name a few! Write about them or draw a picture of each one to show how you have gathered information about the pandemic.
Bonus–walk around your neighborhood or town and try to find three sources of information about the pandemics (yard signs, flyers, people you know). Write down what you find and share with your classmates.
Reflection Questions:
- How do we share medical information differently today than during these historic pandemics? How is it the same?
- Why do you have to be careful about where you get medical information?
- Who do you trust to share good information? Why?
- What are the main ways you have learned about the coronavirus?
Pandemic Primary Source Sets developed in collaboration between the Maine Historical Society, Maine State Archives, Maine State Library, and Maine State Museum.