INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16840, 11 September 1920, Page 3

INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC.

SOME BRITISH FIGURES. A certain amount - of gloomy interest attaches to the belated report of the British Registrar-General on the great epidemic of 1918-19 at Home. In 1918 the deaths directly ascribed to influenza numbered 112,329, equal to 3129 per million of the civilian population. “No such mortality as this has ever before been recorded, ’’ says the report, “for any epidemic in this country since registration commenced, except in the case of the cholera epidemic of 1849, when the mortality from that cause rose to 3033 per million.” The total deaths directly attributable to infliynza during the 46 weeks from June 23, 1918, to May 10, 1919,' in which the epidemic ran its course, amounted to 151,446, or 4774 per million. Influenza also, of course, increased largely the mortality from respiratory diseases and affections of the heart. It is noted that in earlier years the disease was less serious for patients under 65 years of age, and more so for those above that age, but the 1918 epidemic violently reversed that position. “Those under 55 died in appalling numbers, those over 55 seemed to be relatively safe.’’ '"lt is doubted 1 whether “so sudden and so complete a change of incidence can be paralleled in the history of any other disease,” yet medical testimony goes to show that the influenza of 1918 was essentially the same as that of former years. No explanation of the change that has yet been attempted is satisfactory, though it is supposed that it was due to a_ change in the infecting organism. No reference is made_ in the report to the possible connection commented upon by doctors between the severity of the disease and the rationing of the population during the war, which meant that large numbers were less fitted physically to resist attack than they would have been otherwise. We are left face to face, as the medical . contributor of The Times remarks, with the question still unanswered: “What are the causes which from time to time endow a comparatively harmless malady with ferocious strength, enabling it to destroy its thousands of victims?” When that problem is salved, wo may, as the writer suggests, be able to protect ourselves against another such calamity.