[Note: I ended this series on the Spanish flu in May, but a spike in cases during the current pandemic led me to find more missteps and quack cures a hundred years ago. I’ll be posting them in the coming weeks.] A 1919 article on the editorial page of Montana’s Great Falls Tribune showed a photo of a Swedish physician using “powerful electric light and heat” on a patient suffering from the Spanish flu. The therapy was said to produce “excellent results.” No data were presented to further enlighten the newspaper’s readers. 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).
