Influenza : $b An epidemiologic studyVaughan, Warren T. (Warren Taylor)
History
Influenza : $b An epidemiologic study
Vaughan, Warren T. (Warren Taylor)
Influenza
“A typical case is as follows. The onset is usually acute; the early
symptoms are those of a ‘cold in the head.’ The temperature may be 101
or 102°, but there are no features to distinguish the condition from
acute ‘coryza’ or febricula, so that in the majority of cases the
patient does not report sick for two or three days, by which time he is
sent to the hospital. At this state two features attract particular
attention. First, the character of the expectoration: this consists of
thick pale yellow, almost pure pus, not the frothy expectoration
familiar in ordinary bronchitis; it has no particular odor and it
becomes increasingly abundant until in a day or two it may amount to
several ounces in the twenty-four hours. Secondly, the rapidity of the
patient’s breathing: this may be so evident that pneumonia suggests
itself, yet on examining the chest the only physical signs consist of
few or many rhonchi scattered widely, but most marked at the bases of
the lungs behind, associated with a wheezy vesicular murmur; resonance
everywhere is unimpaired and bronchial breathing is absent. A little
later a third point attracts notice; a peculiar dusky heliotrope type of
cyanosis of the face, lips, and ears, so characteristic as to hall-mark
the nature of the patient’s malady even on superficial inspection. By
this time dyspnoea is very pronounced; respiration consists of short,
shallow movements, which in bad cases amount almost to gasps,
reminiscent of the effects of gas poisoning. Recovery at this stage may
occur, but by the time the cyanosis has become at all pronounced the
prognosis is extremely bad, though the number of days the patient may
still live, in spite of the severity of his distress, is often
surprising. The character of the sputum remains the same throughout,
though sometimes it is blood-tinged or actual blood may be expectorated
instead of, or in addition to, the more typical pale yellow pus. In the
later stages of the illness areas of impaired note or of actual dullness
may be found, particularly over the posterior aspects of the lungs,
associated with bronchial breathing and crepitant râles. These may be
due to the progression of the purulent bronchitis into hypostatic
pneumonia, or into actual bronchopneumonia at the bases; or, on the
other hand, they may be due to massive collapse of the lungs secondary
to the bronchitis and obstruction of the bronchioles by pus. In a few
cases, not necessarily the most serious, a frank lobar pneumonia has
developed later, and has been followed by an empyema from which 15–30
ounces of thin pneumococcal pus has been aspirated—in one case alone was
resection of a rib unavoidable. The condition, however, is not primarily
a lobar or a bronchopneumonia, but a bronchitis, and although a small
amount of basal bronchopneumonia has been present in one or two of our
post-mortem examinations, in other fatal cases there has been no
bronchopneumonia at all, not even the smallest portions of either lung
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