Chapter 16 Chapter 12 The Great Plague of the Century

The most conservative estimate of the flu's death toll is 21 million, when the world's population was less than a third of what it is today.But the number of 21 million is far from accurate, and the death toll is at least as high as 100 million. "In 1918, that is to say, ninety-six years ago, the century-old package was probably opened and stuffed with something." I immersed myself in rearranging the information, "Then what major event happened in 1918?" Lin Zhiyan immediately picked up the tablet to investigate, but before the results came out, Li Mengyue had already opened the door and walked in.She was carrying a large burden on her back, and the outer layer was a black environmental protection garbage bag.Li Mengyue threw the bag several times bigger than her on the ground, and four people rolled out immediately.

Four people have been knocked out, one of them officially Pierto Rogold. "Wake him up." I pointed to him and ordered. Li Mengyue found a cup of tea and poured it on his face. Pirto groaned a few times in pain, then struggled to open his eyes, and it happened to be Li Mengyue's face that came into view. This guy couldn't help but shouted in horror: "Devil, that beautiful woman is a devil! Help!" "It's so noisy!" Lin Zhiyan felt very annoyed, and kicked him on the throat. Poor Pierto clutched his neck, and could only let out a hoarse scream in his voice.

But it also made him notice Lin Zhiyan's appearance, his pupils suddenly dilated, he couldn't say anything while pointing at her, so he could only gesture uncomfortablely. I poured a glass of water and handed it to him. Pirto finally recovered his ability to speak after drinking it. He still looked at Lin Zhiyan without blinking. "Have you ever seen a beautiful woman?" Lin Zhiyan glared at him angrily. I'm also a little baffled, wouldn't Pilto fall in love with the old woman at first sight?The eyesight is bad enough. "No, no, I've seen you!" But what he said next shocked everyone.

I frowned, and asked in a deep voice, "What do you mean? You said you looked familiar to me, and you said you met her. Where did you meet us?" "at home." Pierto stuttered a little, he felt it was difficult for him to explain, "I saw pictures of the two of you at home." "Your home? Is it a thousand-year-old castle on a ridge hundreds of miles away?" I asked. "It's there!" Lin Zhiyan and I looked at each other, "Why is there a photo of the two of us there? When did you see it?" "Not long ago, on the 29th of last month, I was going to clean up the castle, but I found a photo with three people on it, and two of them are you."

Pilto replied in a muffled voice. "August 29th, three people?" I signaled the old woman to show him Yang Junfei's photo, "The third person, is this man?" Unexpectedly, Pilto jumped up suddenly, "He, that's him!" Lin Zhiyan and I were very surprised, why is he so excited? The guy said again: "I dream about him every night, every night, every night, as long as I go back to the castle, I can see this man when I close my eyes." I scratched my nose in surprise, Yang Junfei was in his dream?This is so unbelievable. The old man obviously snatched the items in the century-old package, but the current owner of the old castle dreamed of him as soon as he returned to the old castle. If there is no connection between them, I am afraid that even idiots will not believe it. .

"Pilto, are you the last of the Rogold family? In 1918, what exactly did your ancestor John Rogold stuff in the century-old package?" I lied to him half-truthfully. Pierto shuddered, "It's a disaster." "Calamity?" I blinked and didn't understand, "There was a prophecy poem written in the inner package, which mentioned, 'After a hundred years of peace, a storm is about to sweep the world. When the package is opened, the castle withers, and Pandora's treasure box, Will open again. 'That thing, is the calamity in your mouth?" "Yes, it's a disaster."

Pierto nodded dejectedly. He seemed to think that I knew everything, so he simply told the whole story: "The man in the photo is in danger." "It's a terrible danger. According to the prophecy handed down by our ancestors a hundred years ago, I guess he must have obtained the sealed thing in the package. He may have merged with my castle in an instant, and a terrible disaster is brewing!" Piltow paused, "It is very likely to be a disaster that will destroy the world!" "Is it that serious?" We gasped in shock at his words, "What exactly is your so-called disaster?"

"I don't know, you guys went into my house a few days ago, right?" Pilto asked suddenly. "how do you know?" I stared at him sharply, not extending well, "So it was you who brought us in?" "It's not me, it's the castle." Pierto shook his head, "It's just me following behind you and that little girl." The little girl he was referring to turned out to be Xueqian. I didn't expect that the saying that the mantis catches the cicada and the oriole is behind it actually happened to our group of people. "The ancient castle was activated by the disaster, which caused a series of unimaginable chemical reactions. My uncle's family has already been killed by it. I am afraid that it will break through the constraints of the ancient castle in a short time, and more people will die by then. "

Fear appeared on that guy's face, "Someone must stop it. I saw that the castle has been targeting you, and suddenly thought, maybe you can do it." Pierto looked at me with a sincere look in his eyes. Faced with such a dramatic development, I suddenly felt dizzy. Well, why did I suddenly become the savior in his mouth?No matter how narcissistic I am, I don't quite agree with it. Seeing me looking at him like an idiot, Pierto scratched his head, "I know you don't trust me, I can explain it. Everything starts from 1918!" Many things happened in 1918, but before the sudden disaster, all became insignificant.

At that time, a pandemic flu broke out inexplicably and swept the world, and about 50 to 100 million people died. This number is much higher than the sum of the number of people who have died of AIDS over the years. However, this so-called "global plague of the century" The pandemic also brought about tremendous changes in American medical research, personnel training, and even the entire field of natural science research. The most conservative estimate of the flu's death toll is 21 million, when the world's population was less than a third of what it is today.But the number of 21 million is far from accurate, and the death toll is at least as high as 100 million.

In 1918, Pilto's great-great-great-grandfather, Pilto's great-great-great-grandfather, served in World War I as a lieutenant commander and already an American citizen with an M.D. Paul Rogold.He never seemed to adjust to military life, and the uniform often made him uncomfortable, but he was a warrior through and through, a warrior who fought death. However, in mid-September of 1918, death appeared in front of him in an unprecedented manner. The courtyard of the Philadelphia Hospital was filled with rows and rows of patients, many of whom were covered in blood, and their death conditions were horrific and strange. The blood was not caused by trauma, most of them were nosebleeds, some sailors coughed up blood, others had bleeding from their ears, some coughed very badly, post-mortem autopsies showed that the severe coughing even caused severe pain in their abdominal muscles and costal cartilage torn. Many were feverish and chattering in excruciating pain, and nearly all who could communicate complained of headaches, as if someone had driven a wedge into their heads desperately behind their eyes.They also felt excruciating pain in their bodies, and even their bones were about to break. Several people also vomited.Finally, some of the sailors were so discolored, some with blue lips or fingertips, and a few so black that it was impossible to tell whether he was white or black.They look almost black. These sick people lying in the yard puzzled Paul Rogold and made him sweat coldly. The disease had spread explosively. The hospital ran out of beds, and the Navy sent hundreds of more sick sailors to the Citizen's Hospital in Philadelphia, where sailors and staff from the Citizen's Hospital began shuttling between the Navy base and the city.Meanwhile, patients began being sent across the country... According to Paul Rogold, this was a form of influenza, although it was different from all previously known flu. It cannot be confirmed that the influenza virus was brought to Camp Foston by someone from Haskell County, Kansas, but there is strong circumstantial evidence. During the last week of February, 1918, Nelson of Haskell County and others who may not have been named in the local papers were drafted and marched from Haskell, where the "bad flu" was spreading, to Foston barracks. They probably arrived between February 28 and March 2, and the military hospital first began admitting soldiers with influenza on March 4, which coincided with the incubation period of influenza.Within three weeks, eleven hundred people in Foston were seriously ill and required hospital treatment. Two weeks after Foston's first case, on March 28, Camps Forrest and Greenleaf in Georgia also showed signs of an influenza attack, with 100% of soldiers in both camps Sick leave.Then, like toppled dominoes, influenza broke out in other barracks. Of the thirty-six largest barracks that spring, twenty-four experienced the ravages of influenza.Thirty of the country's fifty-five major cities also experienced Black April as "excess deaths" from the flu peaked. But that epidemic, like dominoes, spread rapidly to the world. After the outbreak broke out across the country, epidemiologists set out to scrutinize U.S. military and civilian health records for any signs of unusual flu activity that predated the Foston outbreak, but they found nothing.France has had several localized influenza outbreaks in winter, but it has not spread and is endemic rather than epidemic. The first unusual flu outbreak in Europe occurred in early April in Brest, where the US military landed. The French naval command in Brest was suddenly paralyzed, and the epidemic quickly spread from Brest to surrounding areas. . The first case occurred in the French army on April 10.Influenza hit Paris at the end of April, and around the same time, the epidemic spread to Italy.The first case in the British Army occurred in mid-April, and the outbreak of the disease followed.In May, 36,473 people in the British First Army alone were admitted to hospital, and tens of thousands of patients with milder symptoms.In June, when the army returned home from the European continent, the disease was sent to the UK. In late April, the German army also suddenly had the flu. At the same time, the virus was gaining its name in Spain.In fact, there were not many cases in Spain before May, but Spain was a neutral country during the war, which meant that the government did not censor the news, unlike French, German and British newspapers - which did not publish anything negative , Morale-destroying news, Spanish newspapers were flooded with reports of disease, especially after King Alfonso also suffered from severe influenza in the thirteenth century. Soon, the disease became known as "Spanish influenza" or "Spanish flu," most likely because only Spanish newspapers reported the spread of the disease, which originated in other countries. The flu hit Portugal, then Greece, and in June and July the death rate jumped in England, Scotland and Wales.Germany initially saw a few sporadic cases in June before the epidemic took full flight and swept across the country.Denmark and Norway had outbreaks in July, and by August the Netherlands and Sweden were also doomed. When the flu reached Shanghai toward the end of May, "it swept across the country like a tsunami," said one observer. According to rumors, half of Chongqing fell ill.Subsequently, influenza hit New Zealand and Australia successively in June, and the number of influenza patients in Sydney accounted for 30% of the city's population.However, influenza, while explosive, was very different from Haskell's severe and fatal symptoms. During an outbreak in France, 613 American soldiers were hospitalized and only one died.Of the 40,000 hospitalized in the French army, fewer than a hundred died.In the British fleet, 10,313 sailors fell ill. Although the naval strength was temporarily weakened, only four sailors died in the end.Soldiers called it "three-day fever," but the disease, perhaps not always mild, could be violent in its violent episodes—much worse than measles. The flu statistics in Louisville, Kentucky, are a frightening anomaly.The death rate in Louisville is not low, and what is even more astonishing is that 40 percent of the dead were between the ages of twenty and thirty, a statistical anomaly. In late May, in a small French recruiting depot of 1,018 people, 688 were seriously ill and admitted to the hospital, and 49 died in the end, 5 percent of the total population—especially Healthy young people - dying in just a few weeks is scary! Between June 1 and August 1, 1.2 million of the 2 million British soldiers stationed in France were struck down by the disease, and then the disease disappeared.On August 10, the British commander announced that the epidemic was no longer spreading.On August 20, a British medical journal commented that the influenza epidemic "has completely disappeared." However, the virus did not disappear, it just sneaked into the ground, like a forest fire burning at the root of a tree, slowly changing, waiting for an opportunity to resurface. On June 30, 1918, the British cargo ship "City of Exeter" docked at the Philadelphia docks after a brief stop at the customs and quarantine station, and a deadly disease followed. Although the cargo ship was not detained, the condition of the crew was appalling. The British consul had to arrange in advance for the cargo ship to dock at an empty pier. Ambulances were on standby at the pier, and the drivers all wore surgical masks. The crew died one after another, and the number increased day by day.They seemed to have died of pneumonia, but according to a Binzhou medical student, the pneumonia was just a complication based on some strange symptoms, including nosebleeds. All the epidemics of 1918 were scary.Americans have realized that the "Spanish flu" has been serious enough to delay the German offensive.There were rumors that these crew members also died of Spanish flu, and the whole city was panicked. The people who controlled the war propaganda machine didn't want any demoralizing news, and two doctors declared emphatically to the papers that these men hadn't died of the flu, they were hiding the truth. In London, where two hundred and eighty-seven people died of influenza pneumonia in the week of July 8, a doctor who performed several autopsies noted: The general features of the thousands of cases dissected twenty years ago were very different from those commonly seen with common bronchitis." On August 3rd, a U.S. naval intelligence officer received a telegram and immediately stamped it with the "top secret" seal. He thought the source of the news was "reliable", so he reported: "I was told in secret, and it is now popular throughout the world. The disease in Switzerland is what is commonly known as the Black Death, but is claimed to be the Spanish flu." On the other side of the Atlantic at Boston's Federal Dock, the Navy has a "receiving ship," a somewhat misnomer, which is actually a barracks, transporting as many as seven thousand sailors to eat and sleep on board. On August 27, two sailors fell ill with influenza.On August 28, eight more people fell ill.On August 29, 58 people were diagnosed with the disease.The sick began to die one after another.Fifty were quickly transferred, terminally ill but miraculously surviving, to the Chelsea Naval Hospital, where Paul Rogold and his young assistant worked. Pilto's great-great-great-grandfather, Paul Rogold, was not a genius. Just a few weeks ago, not only was he seriously ill and dying, unable to do anything to prevent and control this new epidemic, but suddenly, He recovered from his illness completely. Paul Rogold came forward and declared to the medical community at the time that the disease was so explosive that they had to turn their attention to bacteriological investigations to find the causative bacteria so they could prepare a vaccine or serum. According to world media reports, a large number of outstanding scientists began to gather together, and their research results were not satisfactory.A few weeks later, scientists began testing whether a virus was causing the disease on volunteers from a Navy ship, the world's first true human trial. But that's just the residue floating on the surface of history. The real laboratory is actually in the town of Otto, Norway, in the glorious old castle with a long history belonging to the Rogd family. In the temporary laboratory deep in the basement of the castle, countless people are isolated. Hundreds of young people dressed in military uniforms from various countries and originally strong and strong live in groups of ten or more. big tent.They were placed on cots, and all the beds were filled, but there was still a steady stream of sick volunteers coming in. Every patient had a blue complexion, coughed violently, and spit out bloody sputum from time to time.There were bloodstains everywhere, on the military quilts and clothes, some people were coughing up blood, and some people were bleeding from their noses and even their ears, black blood with hard clots. This virus is terrible. It comes and goes without a trace, traverses the entire country, and establishes strongholds in the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, and the Great Lakes.It did not immediately break out in the form of an epidemic, but secretly left the seeds of the pathogen, and then the seeds began to germinate slowly, and finally bloomed into gorgeous flowers.The whole world is shrouded in fear, as cold as death. In that gloomy day, countless scientists searched for special medicines day and night, but no one knew that the only hope was actually in the deep underground of the castle. Pilto's great-great-great-grandfather continued to analyze the virus in one way or another, and in October 1918, it finally came to fruition.Paul Rogold said that he had found clues and could cure all the patients in the castle. No one believed it at the time, but he really did it. I don't know what method he used, but he did it thoroughly.When they woke up, the patients in the castle who were desperately waiting to die were surprised to find that they were really cured, and their energy returned to their bodies, as if they had never been sick before. But the world outside the castle is still raging with viruses.The news spread to governments all over the world. The governments of Norway, the United States and Europe jointly ordered Paul Rogold to announce the treatment immediately, but he refused. For this reason, he was almost sent to a military court. Afterwards, Paul Rogold gave the same thin thing, which was said to have been brought back from Shanghai, to his brother, John Rogold, who was the mayor of Seran City, where Otto Town is located. According to his request, John sealed the thing in a century-old package, and wrote a warning on the inner package, hoping that after a hundred years, whoever finds the package will be able to unlock the secrets in the package. But for some reason, rumors suddenly began to circulate in the world that there were items that could cure the plague and even make people live forever in the century-old package. The century-old package was stolen shortly after, and it was scrambled by various forces during the period, and it never stopped. , but everyone who got the package was wiped out without opening it. In the end, the power that got this hot potato simply sent it back to the warehouse of Seran City Government. The package was quietly waiting to be opened until now. Strange to say, since the item was sealed in the parcel, the terrible virus went from being in the limelight to dying down, and it disappeared completely in 1920.