Is There a Cure for Influenza?

Evening Star, Issue 8810, 27 April 1892, Page 4

Is There a Cure for Influenza?

It is probable (says the * Chicago Tribune’) that when the statistics of the grip or influenza mortality are compiled they will be found to be startling. Those for 1890, covering the countries of England and Wales, have just been issued. They show that the death rate, which had been 19.1, 18.1, and 18.2 per 1,000 during the three preceding years, rose to 19.5 during 1890, the highest point reached since 1881. This increase was due to influenza; 4,523 deaths are credited to it directly and 27,000 indirectly, growing out of heart failure, pneumonia, and phthisis as the results of the grip. The fatality of 1891 was much larger than that of 1890, and that of the present year bids fair to exceed that of the last, with the dismal prospect in store, if we may credit the statements of leading physicians, that cholera is likely to follow the present epidemic. No reliable statistics of the mortality in this country have been compiled, but when it is done the results will be found no loss startling than they have been in Europe.

la view ol theee facts, what comfort do the doctors bring to Buffering humanity ? They have diagnosed the disease accurately enough, and they have traced the cause to one of the smallest and most pestiferous of the whole bacillus family, Farther than this they have not gone. It goes without saying that this is not at all consolatory to sufferers, They know the disease and its symptoms as well as the doctors. It is of little interest to them to be informed that it is the work of a particular bacillus so long as the ravages of that particular bacillus cannot be stayed, What they want is a remedy, but the despair of the situation is that while the profession has not found a standard cure it will not allow any individual member of the profession to find one. The instant an announcement of one is made it is derided and thrust aside, even without a trial. The doctors confess they have no specific which reaches the case. The most they can do is to administer anti-pyrine or anti-febrifuge to lower the fever and relieve the headache and hard, distressing cough, which are universal features of the disease, though both these remedies are dangerous to the action of the heart. The experience of Dr Keeley, of Dwight, who recently announced asafetida in pill form as a cure for the grip, confirms what has been said. Just as the profession derided his bichloride of gold cure for the liquor disease, though he has gone on curing his patients just the same, so it has rejected the asafetida cure for the grip, though the very ones who reject it confess they have not tried it. And yet Dr Keeley speaks from absolute personal experience, He has used it in hundreds of cases, and none of his patients have even taken to their beds. He never has lost a case. In a recent private letter to a gentleman who need the remedy, but not until the disease had securely fastened itself upon him, Dr Keeley says : —“I have telegraphed you this morning to use asafetida in pill form, 16 grains four times a day. This is as much a specific for la grippe as quinine is for ague, and it is as innocent as quinine or any other drug having specific virtue. I sincerely hope and trust that the necessity for taking it will have past when this reaches you, but 1 am very anxious indeed that you shall be protected in everything in which I can advise, Ido nothing empirically, and my friends, when they know me as you do, believe in me. Hence I say to you that since la grippe first made its appearance 1 have never lost a case, nor even had a man go to bed from its effects, though 1 have had, as you can understand, hundreds of oises here among patients, I know and can s ifely say that asafetida is a specific Jor this disease, and an innocent one, I wish the physicians all over the world would recognise this fact; it would save many lives and much suffering.”

npwards.