Early this century, when the Spanish flu was rampant in the city, New Yorkers joked that you’d get on the subway and be dead before reaching your stop.
But the disease was nothing to laugh at.
The Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more Americans than World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
Around the world, 25 million died in one year – more people in a short span of time than any other epidemic before or since.
In America, life expectancy was reduced by 13 years.
The highly contagious flu could be caught by breathing the same air as a sufferer or being exposed to an infected corpse.
And the newly infected would die within days.
The virus is continuing to mutate, and in the next millennium it may again assume a deadly form.
SICK LINE
1200s: Crusaders bring leprosy to Europe from Asia.
1347-1351: The Black Plague kills 25 million Europeans. Most die within a period of two weeks.
1492: Christopher Columbus and company bring syphilis from the New World to the old, according to some.
1796: English scientist Edward Jenner produces a smallpox vaccination after noticing that milkmaids with cowpox were immune to the disease.
1882: German physician Robert Koch identifies bacillus bacteria as the cause of tuberculosis.
1892: Russian scientist Dmitri Ivanovsky proves the existence of viruses.
1928: Penicillin, the first antibiotic, is discovered by Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming.
1943: Doctors use antibiotics to treat tuberculosis.
1952: American virologist Salk discovers a polio vaccine.
1976: Legionnaires Disease, a form of pneumonia, breaks out at a convention in Philadelphia, killing 29 people and infecting 162 more.
1981: Researchers identify AIDS.