Bizarre “inhalatorium” used by Melbourne factory to protect staff from killer flu pandemic

While most of the world was forced to face the killer Spanish flu in the late 1910s, one Melbourne factory was busy introducing a crazy contraption to help staff beat the bug.

An inhalatorium was used at the Kodak factory in Abbotsford, Melbourne, in 1919. Photo: The Australasian

As the deadly Spanish flu swept the world in 1919 — eventually killing 50 million people — one Melbourne workplace resorted to an “inhalatorium” to protect staff.

Photographic firm Kodak introduced the bizarre contraption at its Abbotsford factory to prevent employees falling victim to the global pandemic.

Twice a day for four minutes, staff lined up on either side of the strange structure and pressed their faces into oval-shaped openings over a long chamber.

Steam containing sulfate of zinc solution was released into the chamber from jet sprays in a pipe running along the base.

The inhalatorium supposedly disinfected Kodak workers’ throats and airways. Picture: The Australasian.

The Australasian newspaper published the photo above in February 1919, noting the twice-daily treatment disinfected employees’ throats and air passages as they breathed in.

Melbourne magazine Table Talk reported that the treatment was surprisingly popular with Kodak staff, despite the apparatuses being “suggestive of a peepshow”.

It left staff feeling “refreshed and invigorated”, and was much like a “beauty bath” for women.

“In all respects, it serves the purpose of the vapour bath, which is one of the chief means of cleansing and invigorating the skin in all up-to-date beauty parlours,” the magazine noted.

Masked medical staff and emergency motorcycle crew in Sydney in 1919 during the Spanish flu pandemic.

As the flu spread nationwide, state borders were closed, travel was restricted, quarantine camps were created, schools were shut, public events were cancelled, and people donned masks in public.

Police in Sydney wear masks to protect against Spanish flu in 1919. Picture: The Australasian

The newly established Commonwealth Serum Laboratories produced millions of free doses of a new flu vaccine for Australian troops and civilians.

Melbourne’s Exhibition Building was transformed into a hospital for 1500 Spanish flu patients at a time to cope with the overflow from Melbourne’s overcrowded hospitals.

Hospital beds in the Great Hall of Melbourne’s Exhibition Building in February 1919. Photo: Museums Victoria.

Of 4046 patients treated there in 1919, 392 died.

While theories vary on where Spanish flu originated, it probably wasn’t Spain.

Rather, Spain’s uncensored press was the first to report deaths from the illness.

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The Spanish flu pandemic started in 1918 in the last year of World War I and passed through soldiers in Western Europe.

In Australia, which had just lost about 62,000 people in WWI, about 40 per cent of the population fell ill and 15,000 died – mostly young, healthy adults.

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