WHAT CAUSED "LA GRIPPE" IN PARIS ?

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2790, 31 May 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

WHAT CAUSED "LA GRIPPE" IN PARIS ?

To begin with, I will say I did not have the grippe, which in its orthodox course, began with headache and went on with pains in all tho bones, fever and great loss of strength. However, I saw hundreds of cases like this. I saw a strong German waiter, who was sober and well conducted, fall down behind the chairs at breakfast, overcome with the first symptoms, which was weakness of the legs. I saw two young people, just arrived from England, struck down with headache which almost made them delirious in an hour. And all these got well in a week, after being frightfully ill. In my case, the liver was the organ attacked, and a long, serious, three weeks' painful illness it was, but I believe it was the same poison in the air. I have a theory which I wish to air as we all wish to air our theories (I do not know that I have a monopoly of it), which is that this poison, which has gone all over the world, was hatched here in Paris at the great Exposition. The crowd, the contact, the ignoring of the first principles of ventilation and of drainage, which everyone observed in Paris, I believe, originated these fatal microbes, which were carried away by the millious who left Paris for their homes. They had time to work in Russia, in Greeoe, in America, and in Australia, whence we heard of the disease all about the same time. I believe that it has bee more universal and more fatal in Paris than anywhere else, and the air here is still heavily charged with it. It attaoks every organ of the body, It is difficult to shake it off, People are leaving for Nice in shoals, where it is said they recover. What illustrious victims it has chosen everywhere, and oh ! the sufferings of the poor, who can measure them ? — Paris Correspondent Boston Traveller.