Given our Covid-19 pandemic experience, it’s worth looking back a century to New Zealand’s previous encounter with a worldwide pandemic. In New Zealand, the death toll was just over 9000, of which 223 were from Dunedin. The fact that we have suffered nothing like those tragic numbers is a testament to excellent public health policies and good science. Dunedin’s inhalation chamber was in the old Post Office building on the corner of Water and Bond Sts. The main Dunedin inhalation chamber closed on December 12, 1918 — perhaps that’s why it left so little impression on our historical memory, the high death toll notwithstanding.

Source: Otago Daily Times August 30, 2020 15:33 UTC