STUDIES ON METHODS OF PREVENTION OF EPIDEMIC INFLUENZA

Abstract

The control of any epidemic respiratory disease in time of war, when aggregations of individuals are rapidly changing in both position and size, is a challenge to preventive medicine. For such a disease as epidemic influenza, in which possible methods of prevention during peacetime have been gaining a properly controlled momentum, the acceleration required by the war may well advance the consideration of preventive measures which, though evidence is not complete, have sufficient experimental success to warrant trial. Obviously, such trials should include only those measures which from previous experimental observations have the greatest possibility of success and which have at the same time no deleterious effect. Despite the large group of respiratory infections of different etiology which resemble epidemic influenza, it has been possible since 1933 to identify widespread epidemics of influenza type A¹ with some degree of clarity. The virus of influenza type B has been more