How long have flu shots been around?
The flu has been making us sick since at least 1580, when a major pandemic ripped through Europe and Asia, killing ten percent of Rome’s population in a single week. Over a dozen pandemics have struck since then, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that scientists actually identified the influenza virus as the cause of all this illness. One of the foremost researchers in the country, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., used ferrets to show that the illness was purely viral. Once scientists found the culprit, Francis and his colleagues started working to find a cure. In 1941, they discovered a substance in the noses of people with colds that neutralized the virus and realized that recovering from the flu kick-started the immune system. By 1944, Francis’ team had developed a working flu vaccine for the Army, and it soon became available to civilian patients.
