Many people have heard of the Spanish Flu pandemic are not aware of the horrible pandemic that predated it by just a few months. It was know in popular parlance as the Kraut Krud but was more properly termed the German Mustard Gas syndrome.
Before World War One Germanic culture dominated many parts of the United States as the majority of the populace were of Germanic origin. Although the influence of the Scot Irish was celebrated in story and song in fact the stolid culture of Germany dominated many parts of the emerging world power. One of the most interesting parts of this influence was of course the cuisine.
Sausages, ham, cabbage and sauerkraut dominated the tables of many families of Germanic origin until a terrible cabbage mutation that happened in Iowa in 1914. Processed in the food processing plant popularized by Upton Sinclair in his seminal novel "The Jungle"a huge vat of cabbage was contaminated when an illegal alien Chinese worker fell into the vat and was processed only with the rest of the kraut. This horribly tainted sauerkraut was bottle and shipped throughout the nation.
The effect of this tainted kraut was to immobilize the bowels and led to a noxious cloud of flatulence that was in fact toxic. So toxic that several young children succumbed to the fumes and died. So several governors mandated that all children below the age of twelve wear gas masks or be arrested. Many complied but just as many refused this abrogation of their constitutional right to smell what they wanted.
They were after all free Americans.
(Kung Flu: Pandemics of the United States by Doris Kearns Goodwin)
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