CENTURIES OLD

Evening Star, Issue 19274, 12 June 1926, Page 12

CENTURIES OLD

AHTIOUITY OF INFLUENZA MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS Flow old is influenza in epidemic form? Who were the first people to suffer from the scourge, with its delirious headaches and _ its legacy _ of black depression? It is an absorbing study (says a writer in the Sydney ‘ Sun ’) to plunge back through the vistas of history and discover how the march of the world’s progress, even the advance of civilisation, has carried new diseases, as well as new ideas, in its train. We now know that the cold shivers of influenza shook French gallants in slashed doublets and hose. We know, too, that its cruel headaches gnawed and throbbed beneath the powdered wigs of English gentlemen of Anne’s day. If medical science of today could be made retrospective, wo might even find that those savage fevers of the ’flu flushed worried faces behind steel visors in the romantic years when knights did combat. Wo might even have to revise much of our history. Many a king, manv a noble figure whom contemporary historians tell us died, of “ a mysterious ague ” or was “ stricken with a palsy,” or was taken to his death-bed ot a fever, may have caught a severe chill and developed fatal pneumonic influenza. Medical science was then only in its rudimentary stage. A dense fog of ignorance enshrouded the causes and the incidence of more maladies than those that could be diagnosed. Divine wrath was believed to send the human race diseases as a chastisement, and to search for tangible earthly causes was considered a defiance of the decrees of Providence, In those days if grave pathologists in white coals had isolated germs nu mi lure plates they would have been burned at the stake as dabblers in! black magic. The name “ influenza . ” , has developed from, the word “ influence,” which was' applied with special force to a pandemic as early ns the seventeenth century. At that period Italy feared it as the most deadly of pandemics. The French people called it “la grippe,” and regarded it ns the death gage. j PARIS I? A V AG El) IN 1.V.7. | Rosea nm In discover dates of influ-; enza epidemics lias reached impeno-' trnble fogs round about the sixteenth century. Old records indicate that an epidemic of influenza ravaged Pan's in 1557. It seems to have swept the city so relentlessly that the church services were suspended and the law sessions abandoned. It has been established that epidemic influenza raged in various parts of the world in 1676, 17(l3, and in 17.17. Emanations of active volcanoes were blamed for making oeonle sneeze into their

lace ruffs and thoir snuff boxes of the respective periods. Obviously more facts were available to definitely fasten on the “ ’flu ” blame for the epidemics that blazed up in 1782, in 1803, in 1833, and in 1848. It is clear that though influenza was known long before the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the opening up of now countries and the wider traffic in commerce that followed spread the seeds of many of the later epidemics. Infection was spread by direct intercourse along definite trade routes in the great pandemic of 18S9. In that year it swept eastward through Russia, and its toll of human life was terribly heavy. Most estimates agree that the victims were numbered hy millions. There was n desperate, headlong flight south into China, east into Siberia, and west through Russia to escape the deadly germs. Everywhere the refugees carried infection with them. Influenza oven reached the American continent and raged for several months. It broke out in Canada and simultaneously it flared up in Greenland. These two localities were completely isolated, nor was there communication between them and infected ! Russia,. That fact operated against the general theory that was propounded at the time, that the source i of influenza, was to he found in ema- ’ nations that bred in water-snaked | ground under a. burning sun. OLD THEORIES MODIFIED. Pathologists are now practically in j agreement that n. bacillus is the cause; jof influenza. In most, of the earlier epidemics of influenza there was a general supposition that infection was! carried through the air. Now medical j men have modified this view. They I do not eliminate the possibility—farts , do not allow them--hut they are emphatic that infection with Hie air as carrier must he at very short range, j Research in the last great epidemic; —that of 1918--showed that up In 2d; per cent, of the people who were ex- ! posed to the infection were able tn 1 resist it, and they became “carriers. ' j It has been established. Inn. Hint alter J influenza pandemics such as the disastrous two in kVa and 1918 sporadic outbreaks of influenza in epidemic form usually follows. In these outbreaks the disease is usually of milder form. The 1918 epidemic lasled four mouths, chiming 17(1.HU) lives m iim United States alone. Since then there have been at least, four sporadic outbreaks not nearly so extensive, bur quite definite in form, Thai of 1923 was by far llio most, deslnict.ivo o! these. In' 1918 it was proved I hat inl'e-'-Uou travelled along tile world's trade routes as fast in the lace of iho prevailing winds as with them. tins fad. ton. reacted against (he theory of wind-home infection. An interesting hut little known shlelight of the epidemic of 191 s. was that just before it began a German subnvynue put in nr the port .at CadG in Ppn : *\ Halt, her crew were dead from influenza,! and influenza broke out at ouco in : Cadiz in nrnlem mu.. <>m. j rapidly over a great part, ut Liu ope. {