Spanish Flu

When the next pandemic strikes, US Navy researchers suggest a treatment to blunt the effects of the flu, used during the deadly pandemic of 1918. Some military doctors injected severely afflicted patients with blood or blood plasma from people who had recovered from the flu. Data collected during that time indicate that the blood-injection treatment reduced mortality rates by as much as 50 percent. Navy researchers may launch a test to see if the 1918 treatment will work against deadly Asian bird flu. Human H5N1 plasma may be an effective, timely, and widely available treatment for the next flu pandemic. A new international study using modern data collection methods, would be a difficult, slow process. But many flu experts, citing the months-long wait for a vaccine for the next pandemic, are of the opinion that the 1918 method is something to consider.[15]
In the world wide Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, "[p]hysicians tried everything they knew, everything they had ever heard of, from the ancient art of bleeding patients, to administering oxygen, to developing new vaccines and sera (chiefly against what we now call Hemophilus influenzae—a name derived from the fact that it was originally considered the etiological agent—and several types of pneumococci). Only one therapeutic measure, transfusing blood from recovered patients to new victims, showed any hint of success."[16]