Humphries, author of “The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada,” writes that victims of a mysterious respiratory disease that broke out in northern China in November 1917 suffered many of the same symptoms as those of the “Spanish flu.”
Doctors reported that patients turned blue from a lack of oxygen, coughed up blood and suffered from fevers, headaches, pneumonia and shortness of breath.
During the winter of 1917, upwards of 20,000 workers a month from the plague-infected area of China arrived in the British-leased port city of Weihaiwei to become part of the Chinese Labor Corps.
