DISEASES PREVALENT IN THE ARMY 307 



Germany soon after peace was signed. In our own Spanish 

 War we were assailed with a plague of typhoid fever, which 

 left its imprint upon our civil death rate for years after 1898. 

 A recurrence of either of these diseases had been rendered im- 

 possible by the general practice of vaccination against them. 

 Indeed it would not be an exaggeration to affirm that the war 

 could not have lasted as long as it did, had it not been for the 

 success of the vaccination program in all the armies involved, 

 including those of the Central Powers. No one ventured to 

 prophesy that influenza would be the scourge of this war, 

 although it would not have been illogical. It is a very old and 

 well known although little understood disease. Since the fif- 

 teenth century we have had periodical pandemic waves of the 

 disease, extending to the remotest points of the world. The 

 interval between epidemics has usually been twenty or thirty 

 years. The last preceding world epidemic was in 1900. It is 

 characteristic of the disease that it travels as fast as the modes 

 of human transportation permit, remains at any one place for 

 little more than a month and then passes on to new regions 

 until it has reached the most remote corners of the civilized 

 world. The long interval between epidemics makes it inevitable 

 that each new epidemic must be studied by a new group of 

 investigators. It takes the men an appreciable time to learn the 

 difficult technique which is necessary, and before many have 

 acquired proficiency the disease, and with it the opportunity for 

 its investigation, has passed. Pfeiffer did not discover the 

 influenza bacillus until 1902, two years after the crest of the 

 epidemic had passed, and for this reason many skeptics doubted 

 if he was dealing with the true epidemic disease. 



In this visitation, the disease was called the Spanish Influ- 

 enza, an old name, since several times before the disease has 

 first been recognized in that country. Almost as often it has 

 been called the Italian influenza. The epidemic of 1900 came 

 out of Russia and was commonly called La Grippe. 



There is really no reason to doubt that it has always been the 



