COMPLICATIONS OF INFLUENZA.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 9, 27 February 1892, Page 210

COMPLICATIONS OF INFLUENZA.

The grippe or influenza itself is not particularly dangerous, according to a writer in the London Lancet, but its complications are serious, and its sequelsare of a peculiarly low and < lepressing type. The attack is commonly very sudden. The first symptoms are a chill, nausea, and a feeling of general illness, followed quickly by severe and persistent headache, break bone pains in the limbs and trunk, fever, ami great prostration. A violent paroxysmal, irrepressible and harsh cough with soreness in the chest, is common. Coryza—running at the nose —may or may not attend it. When the disease is uncomplicated, the worst is over by the third day, and the fever by the fourth or fifth, though the debility may continue for weeks or months.

The most serious complication of the disease is acute bionchitis. This may appear early or late. The breathing becomes rapid and difficult. A spasmodic cough is almost constant. The expectorations are glairy ami tenacious. With all this there is the peculiar prostration of the grippe. A more common complication is pneumonia, of which there are three varieties—croupous, congestive and bronchopneumonia. Although these complications are dangerous, yet. recovery is the rule under prompt and careful treatment.

A third complication of the grippe is connected with the heart. If patients sit up, they become faint. Some die of simple failure of the heart ; others are saved from death only by careful attention on the part of the nurse. After the grippe has passed off, a tendency to faintness and neuralgic pains may remain for weeks or months. Another complication shows itself in a diarrlma : still another affects the nervous system, and is characteriz.ed by pains in the head or elsewhere, or by weakness in certain parts of the body, such as the hands or arms. As to treatment, the doctor must decide in view of all the symptoms. But the patient should in every case take to his bed. To keep about is exceedingly dangerous, especially as exposing the patient to the above complications.