VENTURA, CA—Local physician Dr. Greg E. Meade was arrested and charged with endangering the public health after he prescribed a patient fresh air and sunshine.
“You know what the best thing for you to do right now is to go outside, get some fresh air, and enjoy the sunshine,” the dangerous madman told a patient. “Walk around, breathe in deep, take in the sun. It’ll do you some good.”
As soon as he said this, authorities busted into his office and tackled him to the ground. “We’re puttin’ you away for good, you anti-science maniac!” an officer shouted as he cuffed the doctor and walked him out to his patrol car. “Now society is finally safe from bigoted, backward, unscientific ideas like that going outside is good for you.”
During the Spanish Flu pandemic after World War I, one technique was quite salutary: get the patients out in fresh air and sunshine. From Richard Hobday at medium.com:
Fresh air, sunlight and improvised face masks seemed to work a century ago; and they might help us now.
When new, virulent diseases emerge, such SARS and Covid-19, the race begins to find new vaccines and treatments for those affected. As the current crisis unfolds, governments are enforcing quarantine and isolation, and public gatherings are being discouraged. Health officials took the same approach 100 years ago, when influenza was spreading around the world. The results were mixed. But records from the 1918 pandemic suggest one technique for dealing with influenza — little-known today — was effective. Some hard-won experience from the greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks and months ahead.
Influenza patients getting sunlight at the Camp Brooks emergency open-air hospital in Boston. Medical staff were not supposed to remove their masks. (National Archives)
Put simply, medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients; and infections among medical staff.[1] There is scientific support for this. Research shows that outdoor air is a natural disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there is now evidence it can kill the flu virus.
