Читать книгу Epidemic Respiratory Disease. The pneumonias and other infections of the repiratory tract accompanying influenza and measles онлайн

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Pure B. influenzæ pneumonia, if such cases existed, presented no diagnostic features by which it could be distinguished from pneumococcus bronchopneumonia following influenza. It was impossible to determine on clinical and bacteriologic grounds alone what part the prevalent influenza bacilli played in the causation of the actual pneumonia.

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That wide variations in the conception of influenza have arisen during the recent pandemic, even a hasty review of the literature makes clear. In its essence this divergence of opinion seems to depend upon whether pneumonia is considered an essential part of influenza or a complication due either to the primary cause of influenza or to secondary infection. One extreme is expressed by Dunn^[30] who says “the so-called complication is the disease,” the other by Fantus^[31] who finds influenza a relatively mild disease with pneumonia a relatively infrequent and largely preventable complication.

A similar divergence of opinion prevails with respect to the bacteriology of influenza. There is fairly general agreement that the members of the pneumococcus and streptococcus groups and to a less extent other organisms are responsible for a large proportion of the secondary pneumonias, and but few observers hold that they possess any etiologic relationship to influenza. No such uniformity of opinion exists, however, with respect to the relation of B. influenzæ to influenza and to the complicating pneumonia. By some it is considered the primary cause of influenza, by others it is regarded as a secondary invader responsible for a certain proportion of the secondary pneumonias, and by still others it is not considered to bear any relation either to influenza or its complications.