NEARING SOLUTION

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2669, 13 September 1937, Page 5

NEARING SOLUTION

THE INFLUENZA PROBLEM RESULTS FROM RESEARCH. The problem of influenza is nearing solution, says the medical correspondent of the Daily Mail. It is four years since Sir Patrick Laidlaw and his colleagues at the National Institute of Medical Research, Hampstead, isolated a- virus from the throats of human influenza patients. This virus has been compared with those found in many other parts of the world, and is definitely established as the true cause of the illness.

Dr. Burnett-, of Melbourne, is growing a strain of virus weakened by culture in hen’s eggs, which it is thought, may be used in the form of nosedrops, instead of injections, when an outbreak is threatened.

English workers are concentrating on another type of vaccine in which the virus is killed by formalin. Serums intended for treatment, not prevention, have also been developed. They ward off the fatal lung complications of influenza.

When the malady is finally vanquished it will be due to the efforts of hundreds of doctors, medical students and soldiers, who have given blood specimens or submitted to experimental infection.