Influenza : $b An epidemiologic study — John Shaqi
Influenza : $b An epidemiologic studyVaughan, Warren T. (Warren Taylor)
History
Influenza : $b An epidemiologic study
Vaughan, Warren T. (Warren Taylor)
Influenza
In spite of our 20th century erudition, the influenza when it first
appeared in mild form in the American Expeditionary Forces in 1918, for
a lack of better knowledge as to its cause was called “three-day fever.”
In Italy in the same year the designation of the disease progressed from
pappataci fever through “Spanish grip” and “summer influenza,” until
finally it was designated influenza, pure and simple. Sampietro in Italy
particularly discussed the possibility of the disease being pappataci
fever.
Belogu and Saccone, who wrote in May of 1918, decided that the epidemic
was not influenza in spite of the manifest clinical similarity, chiefly
because of the absence of signs of secondary invasion, such as nervous
symptoms, gastro-intestinal symptoms, and pneumonia, and especially
because of the rapid recovery after defervescence. They also considered
the possibility of pappataci fever and dengue, and ruled out both. They
discussed calling the condition “influenza nostras,” but reached no
definite conclusion. Trench fever was also considered by some. United
States Public Health Reports for 1918 record that dengue was reported
prevalent at Chefoo, China, during the two weeks ended June 15th, 1918.
One week later there was a paragraph stating, “Prevalence of a disease
resembling dengue and affecting about fifty per cent. of the population
was reported at Shanghai, China, June 15, 1918.” It is not impossible
that this was influenza.
Zinsser reminds us that Hayfelder, when he saw the influenza as it
spread in Petrograd in November of 1889, remarked its close clinical
similarity to the description of an epidemic of dengue which had
prevailed in Constantinople during the preceding September. Hayfelder,
in studying the 1889 epidemic at its onset in Russia and the East, wrote
of “Sibirisches Fieber” which was first looked upon as malaria owing to
the apparently complete absence of the complicating lesions habitually
associated in our minds with influenza.
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