Modern Flu with Michael Bresalier
Episode 129 - October 10, 2024
Michael Bresalier (Swansea University) discusses his work on the modern flu with Merle and Lee. Michael begins with talking about influenza in general and how the virus is constantly changing. The conversation then moves to focus on the annual flu shot – including its composition and how it is manufactured. Michael answers questions about a few other topics – including the impact of the 1918 pandemic on the knowledge of the flu in medical thinking, and the classic story of how the flu virus was discovered – where he highlights the invisible institutional framework that enabled the discovery to happen. The interview concludes with a reflection on the work needed to control a disease and the necessary multi-species approach required to do so.
Further Reading
- Michael Bresalier, Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
- Michael Bresalier and Michael Worboys, ‘“Saving the Lives of Our Dogs”: The Development of Canine Distemper Vaccine in Interwar Britain’, British Journal for the History of Science, 47 (2014): 305–334. Open Access
- Guy Beiner, ed., Pandemic Re-Awakenings: The Forgotten and Unforgotten ‘Spanish’ Flu of 1918–1919, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, especially, Jeffrey S. Reznick, ’The Past, Present and Future of Memory: Medical Histories of the 1918–19 Influenza Epidemic in the United States’, pp. 234-43.
- George Dehner, Influenza: A Century of Science and Public Health Response Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012.
- John M. Eyler, ‘De Kruif’s Boast: Vaccine Trials and the Construction of a Virus’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80 (2006): 409–438.
- William Summers, ‘Inventing viruses’, Annual Review of Virology, 1 (2014): 25–35.
Our Guest
Michael Bresalier
Lecturer – Department of History – Swansea University
