INFLUENZA 235 



such organism according to some accounts known to 

 science ; and that, consequently, it has only been possible 

 to detect it by the very highest microscopic power, that it 

 has an affinity for such substances as the cerebro-spinal 

 fluid, and, as we infer, has been actually found within that 

 fluid when drawn from the cerebro-spinal cavity. If these 

 things be so, and we have so far no reason to doubt the 

 truth of them, then we say we are warranted in advancing 

 the statement of opinion that there is no longer any diffi- 

 culty in recognising the possibility and probability, yea, 

 the certainty, of the direct invasion of the cerebro-spinal 

 cavity through the channels and air passages described in 

 the preceding pages, that the continuity of these channels, 

 with their fluid contents, affords just such a means of 

 access to this hitherto reputed to be * ' shut sac " that the 

 spores of the smallest living organism known to science 

 find it an " easy way," and that, therefore, the morbid 

 entity known as influenza is revealed from inception to 

 close in a way which is seldom possible in the complicated 

 fields of pathological research and bacteriological problems. 



We might here add that the lower animals, who are 

 liable to attacks of influenza, evince very much the same 

 symptomatic and pathological phenomena as those de- 

 scribed, and that the horse in particular has shown a 

 peculiar liability to attack; "pink eye" in them being 

 often the epizootic prelude to an epidemic spread of the 

 disease. In reference to this peculiar liability of the horse 

 to influenza, or pink eye, we would suggest that the 

 materies morbi, being air-borne, attaches itself with the 

 utmost facility to the large moist surfaces of the con- 

 junctival membranes of the eyes, from which they are 

 removed by the palpebral surfaces and lachrymal fluid into 

 the nasal ducts, and thence into the nasal passages, where 

 they are at liberty to enter and develop along the olfactory 

 peri-neural lymph spaces into the cerebro-spinal cavity, 

 when the local give place to, or are followed by, the 

 constitutional manifestations of the disease. 



The influenza bacillus is essentially an air-borne and 

 atmospherically delivered zymotic organism or morbid 

 agent, and requires for its rapid spread the provision of 

 free space open to air currents, where it can play at large 



