INFLUENZA RAMPANT.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXII, Issue 12435, 7 April 1908, Page 4

INFLUENZA RAMPANT.

London was stricken with influenza when the last mail left England. Official returns showed that the deaths directly due to influenza jumped from 25 to 84 in three weeks. Bronchitis, with 231 deaths, were the only other more fatal diseases. Not only did it spread rapidly, but it took on a much more malignant form. Before Christmas many of the cases presented symptoms resembling a low grade of tvnhoid fever. Continuous dull headache, with great lassitude and slight but persistent rise of temperature, were prominent symptoms. During January the nervous type became prominent — splitting headache, with severe pains in back and limbs, causing complete prostration. Then came the ordinary type of the disease, in which th& mucous membranes of the nose, throat, and lungs are chiefly attacked. This was the commonest type of case in London at latest advices, and as it is the most deadly, the increase in the death-rate was accounted for. The Daily Express estimated that about 200.000 people in and around London were suffering from the disease. Business, of course, suffered most serious inconvenience. Some large establishments had as many as 200 men on the sick list, and firms found that it was impossible to rely with any certainty on work being done, for a man instructed to do something might fall suddenly ill in the middle of his task. The question has arisen again, whether influenza is infectious or .contagious, or simply epidemic. The papers publish warnings about the spread of infection, but some experts believe that the disease is not caught from stricken people, but that a large number of people are attacked independently. Fortunately, the treatment is very simple, rest in bed being the only real essential. "Quinine in many cases will, if taken at once, shorten the attack, but nothing can do away with the necessity for the patient's being in bed. If this fact were thoroughly known and appreciated, influenza would at once become a harmless and trifling ailment. When a man feels influenza coming on he should go to bed at once and take the most stringent precautions^ to avoid any draughts or * exposure, which might^ lead up to those most deadly complications of influenza— bronchitis and pneumonia." Such is a London doctor's advice.

The Rev. J. A. Luxford, speaking at a meeting of the Ministers' Association at Auckland yesterday, referred to the growing secularisation of the Sabbath, and deplored- the prevalence of Sunday picnics, stating that it was time the churches be r stirred themselves.