Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3rd, 1918. RECORDS OF PREVIOUS PANDEMICS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1910, 3 December 1918, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3rd, 1918. RECORDS OF PREVIOUS PANDEMICS.

A MEDICAL correspondent supplies the following to a contemporary: —Influenza may be followed into the remotest periods from which we have any epidemiological records at all, and pandemics have been observed in various parts of the globe from the twelfth century onwards. Numerous pandemics appear to have occurred irj the 18th century, and three at least stand out prominently in the 19th — the 1837-38, the 1847-48, and the 1889-1895 respectively. A pandemic is generally succeeded by epidemics. and by endemic prevalence in some areas. The disease is said to be endemic in China. The Ke-

gislrar-General sctimates that during' (he years 1890-93 influenza was accountable for 125,000 deaths in England. Then; was evidence of abatement in 1894, .hut in 1895 the deaths were in marked excess; the two following years again showed diminution. More than one quarter of the whole population of London suffered during the pandemic of 1847-48. In Paris the proportion was nearly one-half. There are the (1) respiratory type, (2) gastric; type, (3) nervous type, (4) febrile type. The remedy that is most deserving of confidence in the treatment of influenza is quinine. It seems to he really an antitoxin in this disease. Mosse lias shown that the bacillus of influenza is unable to live in an organism in which quinine circulates. Rabbits were protected by subcutaneous injections of quinine against the blood of influenza patients, as well as against prone cultures of Pfeiffer's bacillus.