I 46 



NATURE 



[October 24, [918 



no previous epoch has the countn depended more 

 foi lis preservation on competem and ascertained 

 knowledge, and never have we had with us a 

 larger number of available nun skilled in some 

 branch of knowledge and already familiar with 

 the administrative and functional routine through 

 which thai can best be applied to national work. 

 Men oi affairs, themselves prominent in the ranks 

 id men oi science, are neither few in number nor 

 unknown to constituencies. Something has been 



said in medicine about the exact constitution and 



responsibilities of the committee which should 



select suitable candidates for whom seats 



could be found. It docs not matter very 



much what method oi selection is taken so 



that the right goal is clearl) set up, and there are 

 those ready to lie true to the test of the time. A 

 very small sum of money small as sums go 

 to-day -in the hands of a lew administrators 

 acquainted with the problems and with the per- 

 sonnel of the scientific world would permit them 

 at once to consull the part) Whips and arrange 

 loi the candidature of an experimental group such 

 as competent State chiefs would gladly welcome 

 to tin House and constituencies live to be thankful' 

 they ever sent there. J. J. Robinson. 



EPIDEMIC INFLUENZA. 

 TH'HE name "influenza " is of Italian origin, and 

 J- is derived from the Latin infiuxio, which 

 signifies a humour or catarrh. Creighton 2 gives 

 the following account of its introduction into the 

 English language : — 



"It was in 174;, that th# Italian name 'influ- 

 enza ' first (ame to England, the rumour of a great 

 epidemic, so called, at Rome and elsewhere in 

 Italy having reached London a month or two 

 before the disease itself. The epidemic of 1743 

 was soon over, and the Italian name forgotten, 

 so that when the same malady became common in 

 1762 someone with a good memory or a turn for 

 history remarked that it resembled ' the disease 

 1 ailed influenza ' nearly twenty years before. After 

 the epidemic of 1782 the Italian name came into 

 more general use, and from the beginning of the 

 present century [i.e. 1801J it became at once 

 popular and vague. The great epidemics, of it 



in 1833 and 1.S47 fixed its associations so closely 

 with catarrh that an ' influenza cold ' became an 

 admitted synonym for coryza or any common cold 

 attended with sharp fever." The last-named usage 

 has lingered in common parlance to the present 

 day, and such •'running" colds are frequently 

 contagious. The series of epidemics from 1889 

 to 1893 effectually dispelled the idea of the neces- 

 sary association of epidemic influenza with 

 catarrh. 



It has also been customary since 1893 to term 

 "influenza" any brief febrile affection associated 

 with more or less headache and muscular pain. 

 The nature of such attacks is littl,. known, but 

 the majority are certainly not true influenza. 

 mic influenza is a malady which has probably 



1 " History of Epidemics in Britain, ., 



NO. 2556, VOL. I02] 



existed from the earliest times. Creighton 1 

 allusions to it in the medieval Latin writers, and 

 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries strange 



epidemics arc recorded from time to time under 

 such names as "new disease," "hot ague," 

 "sweating sickness," and others which seem un- 

 doubtedly to have been manifestations ol it, and 

 the disease has recurred again and again with 

 an interval ol a lew years. In the nineteenth 

 century, alter an outbreak in [855, mine than a 

 generation passed with little or no mention ol 

 epidemic influenza in this country, when in the 

 early weeks of the winter of 1889 reports began 

 to be published on the reappearance of influenza 



in Moscow, Petrograd, Berlin, and othei 

 foreign capitals. This epidemic wave, like many 

 that preceded it, had an obvious course from 

 Asiatic and European Russia towards Western 

 Europe, and eventual!) reached London, and in 

 January, 1890, had a decided effect upon the bills 

 of mortality of the city. It spread all over 

 England, Scotland, and Ireland, but by the spring 

 of that year had almost disappeared. 



The features of the disease al this time were 

 .1 sharp and sudden attack of fever, accompanied 

 with headache, pain at the back of the eyes, pains 

 in the' limbs, and severe back-ache, with prostra- 

 tion and a general feeling of misery. Catarrhal 

 symptoms were by no means prominent, but in 

 the elderly the disease was frequently complicated 

 by -bronchitis, pneumonia, and heart failure, and 

 convalescence was often prolonged. The pro- 

 nounced back-ache and absence of catarrh at first 

 suggesteel that the malady might be dengue fever, 

 but it was soon recognised that the epidemic was 

 one of genuine influenza. The disease recurred in 

 1891, 189] i|2, and 1893 114, and then waned and 

 almost disappeared. The worst period was in 

 January, 1891 ; in the week ending January 23 

 the death-rate in London rose to 46 per 1000 living 

 (a month previously it had been 21*9), and 506 

 deaths from influenza were registered, as well as 

 a very high mortality from bronchitis and pneu- 

 monia. 



After a period of quiescence lasting for three- 

 and-twenty years, influenza in epidemic form once 

 more made its appearance towards the middle of 

 the present year. In May and June it ravaged 

 Madrid and other parts of Spain, afterwards attack- 

 ing the British and German forces on the Western 

 front, and travelling to this country, Holland, 

 and Scandinavia. London experienced a sharp 

 attack in July, and some 1600 deaths are attri- 

 buted to it. On the whole, however, this outbreak 

 was a mild one, except among the debilitated and 

 the aged. The usual course pursued by the disease 

 was a sudden onset of sharp fever lasting about 

 three days, with headache and muscular pain, but 

 little cat. 11 Hi, followed by rapid convalescence. By 

 the end of August the epidemic was practically at 

 an end. During the present month another out- 

 break has occurred and is in progress, and this time 

 the disease is assuming a more serious character, 

 and main deaths from pneumonia and bronchitis 

 complicating it have been reported, particularly 



