INFLUENZA: THE NEWE ACQUAYANTANCE

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Abstract
The author has used certain historical descriptions of influenza to illustrate the constancy of its characteristics over many centuries. This leads to a further consideration of the factors which produced the 1918 epidemic and its variations from the usual. Analysis of the incidence data from the immunological and physiol. points of view leads to the conclusion that the determining factor was the high virulence of the virus involved which is sufficient to account for all the unusual features. Bacterial complications are suggested as incidental to fatality rather than being the major factor. Protection in young age groups is more physiological than immunological; that in the older ages is the reverse. The evidence is also interpreted to indicate that the 1918 virus was one previously known and widespread; that it was similar to strains of virus since identified. The pandemic characteristic is considered to be less a factor of antigenic constitution in the usual sense than of the change in virulence. It is posulated, therefore, that the 1918 strain is not a fixed pandemic highly virulent strain but a mutation which may arise among strains of varied composition.
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