INFLUENZA 231 



blood circulation, primarily, and then, secondarily, attacks 

 certain specific parts. Smallpox and the exanthematous 

 fevers generally are more or less slow in their respective 

 periods and manners of incubation, and may be said to 

 accomplish that process within the blood streams and the 

 adjacent cerebro-spinal lymph, afterwards manifesting 

 themselves in their own peculiar and specific ways, and on 

 particular parts, according to the laws of what may be 

 called "natural selection." While it may be said that 

 cholera confines itself to the invasion of a more limited 

 part of the human organism, where it germinates, lives, 

 and is eliminated within a much more limited area than 

 is claimed by almost all the members of the great families 

 of the exanthematous and zymotic diseases. 



On dealing clinically with this disease, influenza, and 

 observing the progress the cases of it may have made and 

 the stage they have arrived at when aid has been called, 

 and questioning closely on the sequence of symptoms, we 

 have been struck with a few outstanding, almost constantly 

 recurring, phenomena, such as the local " feeling of relief" 

 to the head experienced on the occurrence of free nasal 

 and ophthalmic discharge, and the general relief experi- 

 enced on the establishment of copious discharge from the 

 skin ; frontal and general headache, gravedo, and nose- 

 ache disappearing, or being modified, on the establishment 

 of the former, the general "aches and pains" evincing 

 a corresponding improvement in the latter. The explana- 

 tion of these events would seem to be that a local outlet 

 is afforded to a superabundant and contaminated cerebro- 

 spinal fluid in the first cases, and that a general relief is 

 attained in like manner by diaphoresis in the other. 



The speedy accomplishment of these events is, there- 

 fore, of the greatest importance in order to "cut short" 

 the attacks or cases, and to prevent the possibility of the 

 occurrence of the graver sequelae of the disease, and this 

 must be aimed at by the promotion of these local and 

 general discharges from the "breeding places" of the 

 disease, in order that the parasitic and pathological intru- 

 sion and confusion may be converted into purity and 

 order. 



Along with lachrymation and running at the nose, as 



