We Heard the Bells

Both of Nancy Kendall’s parents died of illness shortly after moving to Iowa. They left six children behind. Nancy, the oldest, was scarcely 17 years old. It is a story we often read about in historical writings and diaries of those days long ago. Life was brutal.  

Scores of disease events, both bacterial and viral, have been around from the beginning. Each scourge, epidemic and pandemic is unique. Leprosy, the Black Plague, TB, polio, small pox, typhoid and thousands of other afflictions decimated populations. Our native people, immigrants from other countries, indigenous people around the world suffered, and entire cultures were sometimes wiped out.

---

Depiction of Aztec victims of a 16th century epidemic

Most of us experienced the ravages of disease in our own lifetimes. For me, the polio epidemic, and then later HIV, were the most frightening because they were so puzzling. Many of us felt we would never gain control of our world again. A pandemic is the place we never want to reach. 

“We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918” is a film that describes what living through that deadly epidemic was like and its effects on the world.  The "Bells" in the title refers to church bells that chimed when victims died. The sound was a terrifying reminder for the living. 

Each time I watch my heart swells as I listen to the interviews. The 1918 influenza was a mystery to doctors of the time. It hit young people the hardest. No one knew where it came from. As many as 100 million people died in two years. Why so deadly? 

Drs. Anthony Fauci and Johan Hultin are among the experts interviewed in the film. Dr. Hultin was so intent on finding out what made the 1918 virus lethal that he traveled to Alaska in the 1950s and again in the 1990s, to retrieve preserved tissue from flu victims buried in the tundra.

Dr. Hultin made discovering what made this virus so deadly the focus of his life's work. His 1951 expedition to Alaska where he gained permission from Native elders, resulted in virus tissues, but Hultin was unable to replicate the virus back in the lab. 

In 1997, at 72 years old, retired and living in San Francisco, Hultin happened upon an article in the journal Science that drew his mind back to the 1918 flu once more. Molecular pathologist, Jeffery Taubenberger and his colleagues had managed to isolate virus specimens from two young 1918 flu victims. But, the sample size was small. He needed more. Dr. Hultin wrote Taubenberger immediately. 

Hultin found himself back at the same Alaska village he traveled to many years before. Again with Native elder permission, he retrieved preserved virus samples that in time led to its origin as well as a vaccine to prevent an outbreak from occurring again.

I highly recommend "We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918." It offers insight into the situation in which we now find ourselves.

Learn more about Hultin's expeditions and Taubenberger's research in this fascinating article from the Anchorage Daily News, "How an Alaska village grave led to a Spanish flu breakthrough."

Also, available for streaming is the PBS American Experience episode "Influenza 1918." 

The lessons learned from the deadly 1918 influenza outbreak and the preserved samples have given scientists tools and insight into the fight against COVID-19.  

Dr. Hultin in 1997 at Alaskan dig site where so many died of the 1918 flu; they were buried in a mass grave. Photo courtesy of Johan Hultin

"It is absolutely certain another pandemic will come, but we don’t know what form it will be. The question is, How can we be forewarned?" — Johan Hultin, February 2002 

As a non-scientist, I only have stories to tell. The virologists are some of the real heroes here. And so far on the road of existence, we have been able to cope with scourges in the end. Even now, we see light in the distance because of the tireless efforts of the Biden administration.