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His flu elixir was cognac

Elmer Lindholm was buried in straw and in a coma inside a barn in France in 1918. He was one of the American troops sent to fight in World War I. For most of a week, Lindholm would be in the grip of the influenza that was spreading across the world and killing millions of people.

The "Spanish" flu hit young people particularly hard. He was in his early 20s.

Roy Grist, an Army physician at a hospital near Boston, wrote to a colleague about what he had been seeing in soldiers during the pandemic. "These men start with what appears to be an ordinary attack of LaGrippe or Influenza, and when broug...