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

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The opportunity afforded the commission at Camp Pike to devote their full time to a systematic and correlated group study of the epidemic simultaneously from many aspects throughout its whole course made it apparent that influenza per se is in the large majority of instances, in spite of the initial picture of profound prostration, a relatively mild disease which tends to rapid spontaneous recovery. This opinion is supported by the fact that the disease during the first waves of the epidemic in this country, which it is now recognized occurred pretty generally in the army camps during the spring of 1918, was so mild that it attracted only passing attention, since the disease at that time was not sufficiently virulent to predispose to any alarming amount of pneumonia. With the return of the epidemic in the late summer and early fall, however, the disease had attained such a high degree of virulence that it predisposed to an appalling amount of severe and often rapidly fatal pneumonia, which often detracted attention from the real nature of the preceding disease. Yet even during the fall epidemic from 60 to 90 per cent of the cases of influenza proceeded to rapid recovery without developing complications. On this ground alone it would seem only logical to regard pneumonia strictly as a complication of influenza rather than as an essential part of the disease, irrespective of whether the pneumonia may be caused by the primary cause of influenza or not. The complexity of the clinical features, the bacteriology and pathology of the pneumonias following influenza lend further support to this opinion.