The “Russian flu”, which raged from 1889 to 1894, is considered as the first pandemic of the industrial era for
which statistics have been collected. This planetary event started in Turkestan and hit the Russian Empire,
before reaching all European countries, the United States of America, and the whole world. Contemporaries
were surprised by its high contagiousness as evidenced by attack rates averaging 60% in urban populations,
its rapid spread in successive waves circling the globe in a few months by rail and sea, and the tendency of
the disease to relapse. Despite its low case-fatality rate (0.10%-0.28%), it is estimated to have caused one million
deaths worldwide. On serological grounds, it is generally accepted that the causative agent of Russian
influenza was Myxovirus influenzae, the virus identified for all influenza pandemics since the “Spanish flu” of
1918. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has underscored the extraordinary epidemic potential of
coronaviruses, this assumption has recently been questioned. Coronaviruses come from wild reservoirs
(bats, rodents, birds, . . .). They induce respiratory symptoms mimicking influenza, possibly leading to respiratory
distress with pneumonia. In addition to the Covid-19 pandemic, recent deadly and limited epidemics,
such as SARS in 2002 and MERS in 2012, have occurred. Russian influenza presented as an influenza-like syndrome
with clinical peculiarities (multivisceral and neurological involvement, skin rash, early iterative relapses),
evoking some particularities of Covid-19. Four other coronaviruses circulating in the human population
for decades (HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1) have been found to be responsible for 15 to
30% of seasonal colds. All of these viruses are of animal origin. Recently, phylogenetic studies have revealed
the genetic proximity between a bovine coronavirus BCoV and the human virus HCoV-OC43, indicating that
the latter emerged around 1890, at the time of the Russian flu, when an epizootic was raging among cattle
throughout Europe. Could the current human virus be the attenuated remnant that appeared after the Russian
flu in 1894? Was there a coronavirus pandemic before Covid-19 ?