THE HISTORY OF INFLUENZA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 9

THE HISTORY OF INFLUENZA.

One has heard of influenza again, hut luckily not of those dangerous forms known a few years back. It was then thought that a new and terrible disease was visiting mankind, but it was soon established that, it was hut a fresh outbreak of what has been known for centuries (points out the Manchester Guardian). As early as 1580 an epidemic referred to as “sleeping malady” was known, which wins no other than our influenza when it attacks the head. It was again observed in London in 1774-5. No less a person than Isaac Newton made its acquaintance, and the French name for it, “la grippe,” first turned up then. Its meaning and derivation are just what one would suppose—the verb “gripper” means to seize. ’Dio name “influenza,” known since 1733, means “influence,” and the thought is of the influence of the stars on human destiny. This “influenza” is often referred to in the eighteenth century, and South Russia and Astrachan were considered to he. the source of the epidemic. It is interesting that at this time the philosopher Kant suggested that the sickness was produced by “baleful insects,” which were introduced into Western Europe by trade with Russia, and that his view found approval with the medical world of Vienna. In Paris there was a popular song, “La grippe is the fashion in Paris.” Another great outbreak occurred in the. ’thirties of the nineteenth century, and in that of 1889-91 the Breslau scientist Richard Pfeifer made the observations which icd to the discovery of the Pfeifer bacillus, since when we know that influenza is an infectious disease.