Max C. Starkloff

Family and early life Maximilian Carl von Starkloff was born on December 30, 1858, in Quincy, Illinois, the third son of Hugo Maximilian von Starkloff and Hermine Auguste (Reinhard) Starkloff. Starkloff later dropped the "von" to appear less aristocratic.

His father, Dr. Hugo von Starkloff, was a German immigrant who served the United States Army as a surgeon before and during the American Civil War. He was also a U.S. Consul to Bremen, Germany.

His half-sister was Irma S. Rombauer, author of the Joy of Cooking. He published a pamphlet on how to avoid communicable disease that year.

The next year, the U.S.'s third most deadly tornado of record struck St. Louis, leaving up to a swath of destruction in the urban core, and killing a couple of hundred and injuring a thousand more, in addition to destroying 8,000 buildings.

He successfully returned 17 prisoners to the city jail from the hospital's prison ward without incident, and set up a temporary hospital at a vacant convent until several years later when the construction of the replacement City Hospital was sufficiently complete. reappointed Starkloff as Health Commissioner in 1911.

Influenza arrives in St. Louis American Red Cross members removing a 1918 flu victim in St. Louis Aware of the incidence of the flu in New York in early 1918 and particularly in Boston that summer, Starkloff then published an article on mitigating pneumonia, advising people to avoid the sick, crowds, alcohol, and fatigue, and to seek fresh air. Although he believed the sick should self-quarantine, he did not yet think that action beyond that was necessary. The first case on the Jefferson Barracks Military Post, about 10 miles south of St. Louis, was reported on October 1, and within a week there were 800 cases.

Starkloff asked the Board of Aldermen for special powers, but Mayor Kiel thought that no action should be taken at that time. With the waning of the flu pandemic in St. Louis, Starkloff relented to the gradual reopening of public places. Second, Starkloff's intervention served to "flatten the curve." That same year, St. Louis renamed City Hospital to the Max C. Starkloff Memorial Hospital.

As modern day pandemics occur, Starkloff's social distancing precautions continue to be cited in both medical and popular literature, and would be called for again in a coronavirus pandemic a century later.