The Influenza Epidemic.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 67, 13 September 1894, Page 2

The Influenza Epidemic.

Influenza has been so rife in the listrict, with such startling changes :rom the milder to the more .fatal terminations, that we have been at the trouble to interview a medical practitioner, whom we knew to be both experienced and successful ' in its treatment, and we have obtained the following information in answer to aur queries, on the promise that his name should not appear. What 13 influenza? The influenza of my young days was a catarrhal fever that ran a definite and generally a mild course with hardly any complications, but that of the present day bears a very much more serious aspect from its tendency to undermine the vital powers. What are the chief dangers 1 In consequence of so many having it in a light form, requiring little or no treatment, the principle risk is from loss of valuable time when the symptoms show a virulent tendency. Would you mind defining such tendency ? Certainly not ! After the first symptoms of fever with pains in the head or limbs have beeu subdued, the dangerous tendency is the sudden impairment of the respiratory system, generally starting with pleurisy (or pain in one side of the chest) and accompanied by short quick breathing, or else c, collapse of the circulation, shown by extreme exhaustion, with a feeble pulse. Tue treatment would not be the same in both these cases ? „ No. And hence you can perceive that there is no royal road for its treatment. In each case may be defined a tendency to death, and if there is that has to be comuatted with according to which line it is taking. Dr Morell Mackenzie and two other eminent men were consulted, on behalf of a London newspaper, by a young woman who claimed to have influenza, and their prescriptions were published and largely adopted. What is your opinion about them ? „, I think that it was a very silly ruse, as leading medical men are not fools to be deceived when they have^ the temperature, the breathing, the eyes, and the pulse, to guide them, and that their treatment was admirably suited for the case as it was presented, and not as it professed to be. . One often hears people say, Take plenty of whiskey and quinine. Is it not generally considered a good thing to do? ; ~.^ s Whiskey is injurious to a person in high fever, and quinine would intensify the sufferings of the head. The idea has arisen from whiskey, especially in milk, being so extremely valuable in restoring the circulation after the fever, if the patient is sinking. Cannot you formulate a good general prescription for influenza 1 " J^ w " Utterly impossible! without knowing the condition of the patient and the cdnrse the complaint is running. Is not the cough a proof of mischief \ No. There is generally a cough, but in the absence of .other chest symptoms it may be a very harmless though troublesome accompaniment.