INFLUENZA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 34, 10 February 1937, Page 6

INFLUENZA.

A BUNGLING AMATEUR'S NOTES (By NELLE M. SCAN LAN.) LONDON, January 22. For many years I have cultivated the art of influenza, but I have not yet achieved professional status; I am still a bungling amateur. I prefer my influenza in February. It is such a dull month, and if you have to stay in bed you don't miss much, except foul weather. And if a month must have an evil reputation, it is better that it should be the shortest month, and be done with it. By February, Christmas and New Year are safely behind you, the winter sales are over, and you can try out the new eiderdown as your temperature rise*, and the bargain breakfast set may cheer your convalescence as you sit up in bed with your new woolly jacket on. lufluenza means more hi'l*; expenses rise with your temperature—that bottle of stuff to bring your temperature down and that other to send your groaning spirits up. If you must have high expenditure, its only common sense to have it in the shortest mouth, and no equalise the household budget. February influenza also provides an admirable excuse for all your omissions between Christmas and Kaster. "I'm so sorry, but I had 'flu, you know.'' Its baleful influence can be made retrospective, as well as to stretch into a prolonged convalescence, and it may justify the beneficent cruise, and this will justify the leap into spring fashions before their due time, an amazing tonic to most women. Unusual Effects. I could give you a dozen more reasons in support of the February 'flu, but this year it came ahead of schedule and upset many Christmas parties, and interfered with New Year resolutions. Now, in late January, we are just at the peak of the epidemic, and last week over 1000 deaths have been recorded in England. But it lias not been such a deadly dose this time; not so much pneumonia, though the after-depression, so the doctors say, has been one of its worst features. There have been a number of suicides by patients who have been through it, including several doctors, who have been overworked. Two unusual features have been the disastrous effect on eyesight and the loss of balance. Manv doctors have commented on this.

When I woke one morning with all the well-known symptoms I hurriedly dressed and went out to lay in stores for the siege. Then, with telephone and lamp beside niv bed, and oranges, aspirin, throat pastilles, soda water and all those little things one likes to have at hand, T lay me down and awaited developments. And they ramp. T was puzzled by that feeling that I had lost my rudder, and whenever I set out to eross the room T did so in a series of curves, always to the right. It was this new feature which affected that spot behind the ear which governs our balance, and set patients "tacking." some to the left and some towards the right, but to follow a direct course seemed impossible. Eves, too, suffered badly, and one was content with the newspaper headlines only. Two doctors, who have been experimenting in the hope of providing a serum with which to combat the epidemic, have been asking for specimens of blood from influenza patients, as they claim that a preparation from this may make others immune. If this new brand of influenza makes its way out to you in New Zealand next winter it will probably have the 1937 variations, the deepest of deep depression afterwards,' the temporarily impaired eyesight, and the tendency to walk in curves. But unless it is neglected, it does not develop into pneumonia, and most of the victims ill this year's death roll have been elderly people.