Getting Influenza Under Control

Just as there are war leaders who see in the world nothing but points of attack and defense and vital interests, proceeding from their own selfishness to draw calamity down upon the world, there are also humanitarian leaders who have laid their plans and perfected every detail of them for the attack upon humanity's enemies — the deadly germs that threaten mankind in the very core of their being. Among these germs: influenza.

In times past people reckoned this epidemic a blow from the unseen world for the chastisement of men. And since its ravages were fiercest in the cold of winter, and its visits to the Italian cities recurred in that same season, they attributed its origin to the influence of the weather; and so the disease acquired its name from the word 'influence,' whose equivalent in Italian is the word 'influenza' — with the z turned into an s.

I have seen, however, in the words of one of our physicians, the view that the name is Arabic, taken from 'adha al-anf' — 'the affliction of the nose' — which evolved, inverted, into 'influenza.' Neither view is without merit. But what concerns us is how control over this inveterate enemy is to be attained.

In 1943 the disease spread through the United States of America, and the complaints it raised grew so loud that the high command detailed squads of physicians to combat it. The first thing on which they concentrated their efforts was the devising of a protective serum. They made prodigious efforts, at the end of which they succeeded in cultivating the influenza germs in the hen's egg; and this discovery was the first step toward control over this pestilent disease. Having been a mystery, it became something tangible and under observation.

Twelve thousand five hundred soldier-students in thirteen American universities volunteered to run the risk of trying the influenza serum in their own bodies. Half of them were inoculated with a vaccine of killed germs, and the rest were left without inoculation. When influenza's invasion of the universities began, it was sweeping and severe, engulfing nine and one-third percent of the number of volunteers in the experiment; the share of the inoculated half was two and one-fifth percent, while among the uninoculated the cases amounted to upwards of seven percent.

This result was highly satisfactory, for it means that in the thick of such an epidemic two-thirds of the people can be protected from a disease which leaves the human body in a state of weakness that most often exposes it to the inroads of pneumonia, and then death.

In this blessed step the physicians learned that the influenza germ is not solitary, but part of a 'family of germs,' each of which works havoc in the body and causes this disease. They tracked down two strains of the stock of these germs and rooted them out. It remains for them to gain control over every member of this wicked family — and then we shall not wonder if mankind is rid of a great disturber of its life.