INFLUENZA STILL PREVALENT
BUT NOT DEVELOPING MALIGNANCY.
EPIDEMIC OE 1918 MAY BE AN AID NOW.
No further notifications wore received by the health officer this morning. Tho number of notifications is not, however, the measure of tho complaint, for influenza in itself is not notifiable, it being left to individual medical practitioners to notify or not according to their judgment.
There is a great deal of mild sickness that docs not come to the notice of doctors, but is treated at homo by domestic remedies.
Hundreds of persons are relying on> tlie chemists, and their sales of mixtures have gone up considerably. One chemist said to-day that his sales have trebled, but not his profits, for in some cases ho has not had the heart to charge. Then there are the cases that are seen to by final-year medical students. These are of persons who are on the books of the Hospital and Charitable Aid Board. The hospital authorities are not acting in a general way and taking patients who can afford to pay for a doctor. But in regard to the poor, who are as it were the clients of the board, and entered as such, the practice is that when the board is notified l of a ease a student is sent to the house under the direction of Dr Williams, the dispensary officer, and if the student reports that professional attendance is necessary Dr Williams makes a visit himself. There have been many calls of that nature recently, and the work of the first-year students is largely increased. It is part of their university course. For* pneumonic patients the isolation ward at the hospital has been brought into use. It has eight beds. The two patients who died in Dunedin were treated in this ward. There are two patients there now, but not very bad. Of what are catalogued as Dr Williams’s cases there have been five during the last five daysi—that is to say, he has visited five houses, in each 'of which there may bo more than one person ill. This total is not large, but it is the same number as for the whole month of June.
A leading doctor, speaking about the subject generally, made a few comforting remarks: “ The present epidemic is fairly but it seems to bo general, not attacking any particular class, not confining itself to the relative]” weak. Pneumonia, happily rare, is no respecter of norsom Is as often seizes aipon the strong ns upon tho weak. I do not fear this outbreak. It has not tho malignancy that would make one fear. There is reason for the belief that our people are in a sense immune in respect to pneumonic influenza. We are vaccinated to it. Tho 1918 epidemic did that for us. Such a happening is quite possible. Measles wo think nothing of. yet in Fiji it is a plague. Tho whites nave been innured to measles; with tho blacks it is something new and takes hold. So with the Maoris ami tuberculosis; it spreads with them, whereas wo have a degree of immunity in our blood. Take, again, the difference! between tho South African War and the German War in tho experiences of enteric. It was virulent in Africa, but we mastered it at tho finish, and it was not affrighting afterwards. This question of natural immunity is not only interesting, but peculiarly consolatory in the present position.”
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Bibliographic details
Evening Star, Issue 18320, 6 July 1923, Page 6
Word Count
572INFLUENZA STILL PREVALENT Evening Star, Issue 18320, 6 July 1923, Page 6
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