DISEASE OF THE UPPER RESPIRATORY TRACT

Abstract

Influenza in its pandemic form is a dramatic calamity, happily seen only at long intervals of time. In recent years, however, minor winter outbreaks of epidemic disease of the respiratory tract, characterized by acute onset, prostration, fever and comparatively little involvement of the upper air passages, have more and more tended to be called influenza, although the identity of these disorders with pandemic influenza has been questioned. On the other hand, the common cold is always with us; it is regarded as a trivial disorder, and yet when one considers that it is the antecedent factor in sinusitis, bronchitis, bronchopneumonia and many cases of lobar pneumonia, not to mention its more remote relationship to cardiovascular and renal disease, it appears in reality a very serious disorder indeed. It is also worthy of note that some relationship seems to exist between it and influenza, at least the interpandemic type, for it