INFLUENZA

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16225, 4 July 1918, Page 7

INFLUENZA

RAPIDLY SPREADING IN BRITAIN. {By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright.) (Australian and N. 4. Cablo Association.) LONDON, June SO. Influenza is rapidly spreading through the English towns, half the employees in some of tho business houses and factories being incapacitated. Tho attack generally is not serious. A few deaths have occurred. OUTBREAK IN GERMANY. COPENHAGEN, June 30. Influenza is prevalent throughout ■Germany. Dr. Seligmann, Director of the Bacteriological Institute at Berlin, states that the outbreak is similar to those of 1889 and 1893. There is no remedy for the disease. PREVALENT IN MELBOURNE. Influenza of a severe type is prevalent in some areas of Melbourne, and leading medical men say that through misguided attempts to fight the disease, there are many patients who have become seriously ill, and whose recovery will be tedious, difficult, and slow—perhaps, indeed, a matter of six months or more. A well-known Collins street physician, when questioned, made the following statement : "The disease is prevalent just now in two forms—one associated with pronounced heart weakness, that may last for months, and in the other that the patient may go through a long period of nervous depression in a form 60 severe that it amounts to melancholia.

"Ail added risk is that people who have a mild attack will in many cases not go to bed. But a 'mild' attack may develop just as dangerously as one chdt was from the lust accompanied by higli fever and sovero pain. People who have these hidden attacks very often get a severe degree of heart weakness, because they will not take a complete rest. This condition may persist for months through the poisoning of tho heart muscle. In regard to the nervous depression that may follow an attack of influenza, this is sometimes so profound as to amount, as I have said, to mel&neholia. Nor is it likely that a patient so nffccted will recover in less than six months.

"What increases tho difficulty of the position, so far as the general public is concerned, is that so many people will insist on diagnosing their own cases. Jones, for example, catches a cold—just an ordinary cold in the head, wo will suppose. But when he meets a friend he will very likely say, 'I've got a touch of influenza —a pretty bad one, I'm afraid But yoti know me, old man; I'm not the sort to take things lying down, 60 with me it's business as usual.'

"A few days later perhaps, the first man gets an attack of nenuine influenza. He suffers from the characteristic pains in the back and limbs, and he has headache and fover. But, thinking of the stalwart Jones, in place of going to hed ho goes about his business as best ha can, for he argues to himself that if Jones with influenza did not give in, neither will he. Ho pays the -price in the end!' Asked whether there was any specific for influenza, this physician said that the cure was not so much a matter of medicine as of nursing. At the initial stages of an attack, however, both aspirin and quinine in strong doses might be beneficial. But the main thing was rest, and the patient should go to bed and remain there until his' temperature was normal again. Usnally this condition would not be brought about in less than three or four days.