INFLUENZA.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16406, 28 December 1918, Page 10

INFLUENZA.

THE EPIDEMIC IN SOUTH AFRICA.

A lady, writing to Canterbury from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, refers to the arrival of the influenza epidemic. She says many of her neighbours, and especially- the Kaffirs, were quite appalled with the terrific news from Cape i'own and Kimberley, where the virulence of the disease was worst among the. natives and men folk. Women fared better, and children were exempted to a large extent. The safest course was inoculation. Feeling feverish and headachy she called in the doctor, who innoculated her with Jfo. 1 vaccine Next day she felt worse, but the illness passed away, thanks to haying taken the vaccine in time, but she intended to have a second inoculation of stronger potency. Her husband had been twice inoculated, being engaged in a public office, and constantly in contact with all kinds of people, and he escaped. Her children had also been operated upon, and it was expected they would escape pneumonia. The disease spread rapidly in the Cape before people could be treated, and from seven -to ten thousand deaths were stated to have taken place. They had lost many of their friends, and some of the cases, where fathers and mothers had died, were truly pathetic, where children were surviving them. The writer said she had quite a handful at time of writing, with seven in her house and seven in the next house to attend to. She had a good Kaffir girl, who, like her children, gargled salt and watpr and permanganate of potash, also sniffing up the nose, and with this little help and a good growth of' vegetables which her husband had planted in their garden, she was able to bake bread and boil large pots of vegetable soup, using beans, carrots, turnips, etc. There were no grocers, butchers, or' bakers calling, and dt was simply a case of making the best with what one had from a laid-in stock of flour and mealie meal. The weather was lovely, and they were able to turn the children out all -day on the green veldt, keeping families separated as much as possible. The dreadful part of the scourge was the death,of men in the prime of life.