’FLU SCOURGE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 28 December 1925, Page 5

’FLU SCOURGE.

LED ONLY BY BLACK DEATH. New census figures show the mortality of the influenza epidemic of 19.18 throughout the world was nearly 20,000,000, the worst catastrophe of the sort since the black death of the Middle Ages, Dr. E. O. Jordan bacteriologist of the University of Chicago, told the American Public Health Association.

“And if the influenza were to descend upon us again to-morrow,’’ he continued, “we should as public healtli workers and students of the disease, be little if at all better equipped to deal with it than we were seven years ago. ’ ’ Practical difficulties in the way of administering efficient vaccination on a world-wide scale seem insurmountable, he said. Face masks have only a limited applicability. Chlorine and similar gases have not proved of decisive prophylactic value. “I believe, however, that something can be done to lower the attack rate in favourably situated small groups of individuals, and to lessen the virulence on the part of the accessory microbes,” he said.- ’ “The minimising of contact seems ar present to offer the best chance we have of controlling the ravages of influenza. Judging by the past, nothing is more certain than that we shall •some day have another visitation of this destructive infection. There are lines of direct investigation which can be prosecuted to-day with some hope of rendering ourselves better prepared to cope with the next epidemic.”