INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16323, 21 September 1918, Page 2

INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

CHRISTCHURCH DOCTOR'S VIEWS. Cable news from Sydney to the effect that influenza in a sever© form w raging throughout the Commonwealth has naturally, .raised the question or whether the epidemic is like;y to reach tho Dominion. A leading Christchurch medical man, interviewed yesterday by a representative of/"The Press, supplied some interesting information m regard to influenza and the complications that follow in its wake. . "There liave been great epidemics influenza since the sixteenth centuryj he said. The cues known best happened in 1830, 1836, 1847, and 188tf, the last being of the most importance, inis pandemic was brought by the caravans from Buchara. It reached Moscow in September, spread fan-wise to the Caucasus and St. Petersburg.-ragei m Berlin by November, reached London m December, and by the end of that month had spread to New York. There was influenza ail over England, the prisons alono escaping for the reason that! thov were isolated. Prior to that time little was known concerning influenza, I but in 1902, Pfeifier isolated the bacillus, and influenza is now recognised as a disease, but one which varies, more than any other in type and severity. It | has a special tendency to attack the respiratory mucous -membranes, half the clcaths in a big epidemic a>o due to pneumonia complicating the disease. Sometimes the bacillus lies latont. Lord, at Boston, m 19J2, found influenzal bacilli in 30 per cent, of 100 unselected cases of acute bronchitis, at . a time when there was' no inffuenza in Boston." . „ Proceeding, the doctor said that the S resent ep'd.:mic appeared to be market y & great prevalence of pneumonia and n bad form of bronchitis complicating tho disease proper. The. disease ap-, peered to be of a more virulent than had hitherto boen known. From what he oould gather from . English medical journals, the comparatively low vitality of people on short food rations had allowed the influenza, to take a. more severe form, and had made the victims of the disease specially liable to complications. Tho. severity of the troopship epidemic might be traced to imperfect ventilation, and to the facb that isolation of the patients would be a difficult matter. . "It is, so far, quite questionable whether this is. one of the pandemic visits of the disease," concluded the speaker. "Time only will tell. At present all that can be said is that the epidemic is of a severe nature, acting on a people whose vitality is lowered, and carrying with it a very large proportion of respiratory diseases which cause the high death-rate. Should New Zealand be visited by the disease, it may be of valuo to the public to know that the chief prophylactic treatment consists in disinfecting the nasal passages and the throat. This has been a systematic part of the treatment of soldiers on troopships, but the men usually treat iho performance as a bore or a joke, and cannot be persuaded to looik upon it as a serious and Necessary precaution."