Dr. Woods Hutchinson had viewpoints about a particular epidemic. “The reason for the spread? Pig-headedness, not another thing,” he raged in Des Moines on November 25,1918 “We knew it was prevalent in Europe and that it would find its method here.” His speech on the so-called Spanish influenza was vibrant, to say the least. “The ‘flu’ germ does not care a hang for your state of mind,” he noted. “After he takes up residence in your nose, he does not provide a blankety-blank whether you’re afraid of him or not.”
However, Hutchinson was anti-quarantine. Instead, he whole-heartedly espoused making use of masks, pointing to the West Coast, where some cities made mask-wearing mandatory in public. Photos from the time reveal individuals going to and fro, with the lower halves of their faces swathed in gauze. Like today’s makeshift masks, their efficiency may have been limited. But some Americans took influenza security one action further: they masked their cats, too.
One image, dating from the years when Spanish influenza rampaged throughout the United States, reveals an unknown family of 6, in Dublin, California, all wearing the basic mask of the time: “white and attached around the head,” as Catharine Arnold writes in Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History. And the family patriarch holds a tense-looking masked feline under his arm, like a loaf of bread.
People worldwide are worrying over their pets catching COVID-19: A recent study suggested that felines can contract it, at least under lab conditions. Canines seem to be less susceptible, though pet masks have actually appeared on eBay In February, newspaper article revealed regrettable cats in China whose owners covered their faces totally with masks, just punching out holes for the eyes.
The pictures inspired around the world hilarity, and possibly they were implied to– it’s tough to imagine a cat actually putting up with a face mask for any substantial quantity of time. Humor might have been a motivation for photos of masked family pets from the early-20 th century.
However there was genuine fear that family pets could bring Spanish influenza. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, one councilman insisted that dogs and cats were accountable for the spread of the disease, proposing that they all be killed or at the really least shaved to avoid more infections.
When pet dogs did get the mask treatment, it was dealt with as a joke. The umpires, gamers, viewers, and the mascot’s dog collected for the game in linen and cheesecloth masks. The dog’s image made the regional paper, as did that of Yancia, a 5-year-old Boston bulldog whose masked muzzle graced the pages of The Seattle Star in late1918
According to Tyler Phillips of the Dublin Heritage Park & Museum, the identity of the household of 6 was who postured with their feline a century earlier is unknown. The exact same is not real of another picture, taken in1918 In it, 5 females and two felines rest on a porch. All of them are wearing masks. The names of the ladies and the cats are noted on the back: “Leading row, Anna Kilgore, E.K. Barr, Ms. Anna S. Shaw. Lower row, Penelope and Tommy, Mrs. Shaw and Golly.”
The photo belongs to the collection of Dan Eskenazi, the curator of Seattle’s Giant Shoe Museum. Eskenazi’s friend Pat Dorpat, a writer and historian, discovered that 4 of the 5 ladies cohabited in a still-standing house on 43 rd Street in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle. One can envision the ladies– bored roomies throughout an apparently endless epidemic– trooping outside in their remarkable hats, then slipping the inglorious masks over Tommy and Golly’s heads. The professional photographer who snapped their image recorded a moment of levity in the middle of a scourge.
