The Definitive History of the Flu

Champagne remedies, sneezing ferrets, and thousands of years of havoc

The Greek historian Thucydides reports on a “three-year plague,” and the Greek physician Hippocrates refers to the “Cough of Perinthus” — perhaps the first mentions of the flu, though medical historians are still debating that.

Italy and France experience a flu-like epidemic. Though early observers often can’t distinguish between the flu and other diseases (like cholera and the Plague), historians today believe this outbreak is the first well-documented record of a true flu “epidemic” — meaning that many more people than usual get the disease, and at roughly the same time and place.