A “disgusting, insatiable scourge“ – this is how the then 15-year-old student Winston Churchill described a plague that began in Russia in 1889 and afflicted people worldwide until the early 1890s. “Almost three-quarters of all the signs above the sickbeds bear the name ‘Influenza’ and the hospital management is hurrying to increase the number of sickbeds,” the “Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” described the situation in December 5, 1889 St. Petersburg. The disease was still “limited to Russia” and “actually harmless,” the article said.
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