A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics

the long version

"Influenza was the great killer of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the so called 'Russian flu' killed around 1 million people across Europe in 1889-93 -- including the second-in-line to the British throne, the Duke of Clarence. The Spanish flu of 1918, meanwhile, would kill 50 million people -- nearly 3% of the world's population. Here, Mark Honigsbaum outlines the history of influenza in the period, and describes how the fear of disease permeated Victorian culture." --Book jacket.