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Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17951, 19 November 1918, Page 4

The rapidity with which influenza travels through a community has been demonstrated in very striking fashion during the present epidemic. There seems to have been a comparatively mild form of iaflnenza prevalent in Canterbury during; the early spring, but tho virulent form of the disease seems to have been imported from the North Island about Carnival Week. Doubtless it was tho assembling of many thousands of people at races and show that spread the infection so widely, but whatever the agency may have been, it seems safe to say that in little more than a week from the appearance of the severer forms of tho disease, something like 10 per cent of the population had boen affected. And it is characteristic of influenza that after a preliminary stago of apparently slow infection, itsuddenly blazes up virulently over a wide district, it commonly attacks the more robust members of the community, and its complications are so various that the authorities can give no precise guide what to expect and guard against.

American files show that " Spanish influenza" was raging in the Eastern Statc3 at, the end of September. Tho first case recorded in San Francisco was isolated on September 23, but at' that timo most of the military camps in tho

country wero affected, and new eases were being reported at the rate of over two thousand a day. Some States were much moro seriously affected than others, and in some the epidemic was believed to have run its course after raging for three weeks or a month. Eastern Canada, also, was in the grip of the epidemic. The death rato was nowhere very high, but the disease was affecting an extraordinary proportion of the people ( and the cases of'simple influenza wero said to be few in proportion to tho3© in which complications occurred. Pneumonia was the prevailing complication, and was almost invariably tho immediate cause of tho "deaths from influenza." The reports generally show that the disease followed much the same course as that experienced hero. In somo instances whole towns were said to be prostrated', and medical and nursing help had to be got in from outside.

Although it is too early yet to claim that the epidemic locally is in hand, it is obvious that tho very fine work that is beinjr done systematically by the voluntary committees must produce its result. Tho spirit of the volunteers, whether in tho street patrols or in tho soup kitchens or tho nursing services, is beyond all praise. Thero is still not enough help available, especially for nursing, but by hook or by crook the authorities are finding attendance for ( all tho worst cases. And tho patrol system, of course,- is proving invaluable. If tho reports from all tho committees are made up daily, a very reliable ■ guide will be obtainable as to the exi tent to which the epidemic is spreading, and if a sudden expansion should occur, the machinery to deal with it will be already in existence.