Sunlight may have saved lives back in 1918
Spanish flu patients treated outside at Camp Brooks open-air hospital in Boston during the 1918 pandemic fared better than those not exposed to direct sunlight, meaning vitamin D could have saved lives during the historic outbreak.
“The efficacy of open air treatment has been absolutely proven, and one has only to try it to discover its value,” wrote Surgeon General of the Massachusetts State Guard, William A. Brooks, in a 1918 edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
“Very little medicine was given after the value of plenty of air and sunshine had been demonstrated,” he wrote.
The patients at Camp Brooks recovered in direct sunlight when available, and doctors noticed severely ill patients improved more than those kept indoors, citing the combination of fresh air and sunlight.
Brooks reported that in one general hospital with 76 cases, 20 patients died within three days and 17 nurses fell ill.
But according to one estimate, the regimen adopted at Camp Brooks reduced the fatality of hospital cases from 40% to about 13%, according to research cited by the National Institutes of Health.
Brooks wrote, “On pleasant days, every patient was taken out of the tents and put into the open … almost every patient without exception had a lower temperature at night than in the morning.”
Laboratory experiments have shown that ultraviolet radiation inactivates influenza virus and other viral pathogens and that sunlight kills bacteria.
Exposure to sun also increases vitamin D levels, which can boost the immune system to fight off infection and was recently shown to cut down the risk of getting COVID-19.
Vitamin D could have played a role in these 1918 flu patients, but the nutrient structure wasn’t even discovered until 1932.
The 1918 pandemic killed 50 million people worldwide and 675,000 in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The coronavirus has killed nearly 943,000 worldwide; 197,000-plus in the U.S., to date.