822 MICROBIOLOGY OF DISEASES OF MAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



by drying, sunlight, disinfectants, and heat; but may remain alive 

 two years or more in water under favorable conditions. Heating to 

 55 kills in about ten minutes. 



In man, infection occurs usually by inoculation. Cases produced in 

 this way, occasionally appear among laboratory workers. 



All plain cases of glanders in domestic animals should be promptly 

 destroyed. Exposed horses should be tested with mallein. Those that 

 react should be destroyed or quarantined, and contaminated premises 

 properly disinfected. Immunization has not been satisfactorily estab- 

 lished. Diagnosis of doubtful cases is made by the use of mallein. 



INFLUENZA* 



Taking influenza with its complications, the recent pandemic in its 

 dimensions and the swiftness of its movements has been one of the 

 most remarkable diseases in the annals of medicine. Reliable and 

 complete statistics are not yet available, but undoubtedly the world 

 as a whole will have to record deaths by the millions and cases by the 

 hundreds of millions, and these chiefly within the year 1918. Its wide- 

 spread occurrence, the mystery of its cause, its startling infectiousness, 

 and its later high mortality formed a combination which in psycho- 

 logical effect gained it a place nearly comparable with an old time 

 pestilence. 



It has seemed at times as though the public felt a grievance against 

 the medical profession for its comparative ignorance of the disease. 

 Several difficulties, however, have attended its investigation. Local 

 outbreaks so suddenly appeared and so rapidly declined that there was 

 insufficient preparation for their study, or where preparation was 

 adequate the cases would disappear before a definite line of research 

 could be foHowed to conclusion. It was unfortunate, too, that with the 

 doubtful exception of the monkey, no experimental animals were 

 available to carry on the work. Finally, it has been difficult to de- 

 termine what constitutes pure influenza, and whether, in the very 

 fatal pneumonias which latterly appeared with it, the associated organ- 

 isms played a major or a minor part. 



Evidence is accumulating that the bacterium of Pfeiffer described 

 below and still known as B. influenza is not the cause of the disease, but 

 takes the role of a secondary invader similar to that of the pneumococcus 



* Prepared by Edward Fidlar. 



