«The Cruel Disease». Public Opinion and Emergency Law in Italy during the Spanish Flu

Abstract

Between August 1918 and March 1919 the so called ‘Spanish’ flu spread all around the world, claiming 50 to 100 million lives (more people than perished in First and Second World War). Although largely forgotten for many decades, the 1918 pandemic has been rediscovered in recent years, not only by health specialists, but also by economists, sociologists, and historians. Following the current emergency we are fighting against for a year now, ‘Spanish’ flu has also been the chosen precedent of the coronavirus, evoking a whole series of analogies and differences among the two crises and about how they have been addressed. On the one hand, social distancing draws a line of continuity between present and past; on the other, one cannot miss the long list of differences between two epidemics separated by a century of changes in terms of medical knowledge and techniques, economic network and models of production, social and political relations and structures. When it specifically comes to the legal field, notwithstanding some considerable discontinuities between the world of ‘Spanish’ flu and the world of coronavirus, it can be assumed that every sanitary emergency – including that of 1918 – requires a balance of interests between personal freedom and protection of public health, as well as a deep insight on its reflection on the public opinion. In the light of the significant role of public opinion in guiding and influencing political choises when dealing with pandemics, the following pages are devoted to a specific chapter of the Spanish pandemic’s ‘macro-history’: the ‘micro-history’ of the legal strategy developed in Italy before the advancing of Spanish influenza, especially during its second wave (august-october 1918). Between the hot summer and the cold autumn of 1918, in fact, the italian government tried in every way to minimize the epidemic course, avoiding to keep people informed on the outbreak, excluding citizens from any sort of decision-making process, and exercising emergency powers in the name of security. A true ‘State of emergency’ was built, therefore, by relying on the consideration that the rule of law was to be suspended in the case of emergency, as the ‘Spanish’ flu undoubtedly was.