On Sept. 24, 1918, as the national press covered the escalating influenza epidemic on the East Coast, Dallas Health Officer Dr. A.W. Carnes warned his community to expect a visit soon from the rapidly spreading disease. Closer to home, some 700 cases of influenza were reported to exist among the soldiers at Camp Logan, near Houston.

Conditions at the camp were so bad that medical personnel had to erect temporary emergency hospitals to care for patients. Several other Texas locations reported small numbers of cases as well, as did Camp Bowie outside of nearby Fort Worth. Carnes was not overly concerned with the news either from within his state or from the East, however, believing that this novel form of influenza was only slightly more severe than common grippe. He recommended that residents get plenty of fresh air, avoid crowds, and keep their bowels open, and asked anyone feeling ill to go home and rest.

An opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News claimed that too much was being made of epidemic influenza. “A good many of our modern maladies seem to be the inventions of that pseudo-science which parades in the columns of the popular press,” the author wrote. These notions were about to be severely tested, as five Dallas civilians already were reported ill with influenza.