Influenza : $b An epidemiologic studyVaughan, Warren T. (Warren Taylor)
History
Influenza : $b An epidemiologic study
Vaughan, Warren T. (Warren Taylor)
Influenza
Walb stated in 1913 that at Bonn during the preceding years there had
been numbers of cases of a febrile affection which seemed to be typical
influenza, but for which the pneumococcus appeared to be responsible.
They were never able to isolate the influenza bacillus, and according to
their statement the Hygienic Institute at Bonn, as well as that at
Berlin, had not “encountered an influenza bacillus within the preceding
ten years.”
C. T. Mayer described in 1913 a case of influenza in Buenos Ayres which
is of particular interest in view of one of the symptoms, cyanosis,
which was so prominent a feature in 1918. This appears to have been an
isolated case. The diagnosis wavered between miliary tuberculosis and
pneumonic plague, because of the high fever and intense cyanosis, with
nothing to explain the cyanosis on the part of the heart. There were
signs of severe congestion of both lungs, and notable enlargement of the
spleen. Bacteriologic examination was negative except for the presence
of Bacillus influenzae and Micrococcus catarrhalis. The patient
subsequently improved rapidly, and the lungs were entirely normal after
thirty days, thus ruling out the other two diseases.
A London letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association dated
February 5, 1915, runs as follows:
“Since the outbreak of the war the public health has been remarkably
good, but the record is now being threatened in the case of London, at
any rate, by an epidemic of influenza.
“The gastric symptoms which distinguished last year’s epidemic are
absent. The disease is most infectious. Whenever it has seized the
individual it has usually run through the entire household.
“Whole offices have succumbed, and as the mildness of the attack lures
the sufferer to continue his normal occupation, the disease has a full
opportunity of extending. A large number have resulted in
pleuro-pneumonia; otherwise the chief symptoms are headache, fever,
tonsillitis.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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