Spanish flu ravaged the world in 1918. Then, as now, businesses took advantage of people’s fear to tout their products. Boyer’s Massage Parlor in San Jose, California, ran an ad that claimed their treatments “guarantee to cure Spanish influenza.” More likely, close contact between staff and clients helped to spread it. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore (1917-1925), a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family (see NOVELS).
