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

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B. influenzæ has characteristics in accord with the clinical features of influenza. It is an organism of very labile virulence; it is always present in our experience on the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract in early uncomplicated cases of influenza, often in overwhelming numbers; in only very exceptional instances, in adults at least, does it invade the body producing a general infection, as the numerous reports of negative blood cultures testify; recent investigations by Parker^[48] and others indicate that it is capable of producing a toxin quickly fatal for rabbits; it is predominantly present in the respiratory tract during the active stage of the disease and disappears in a considerable proportion of cases at time of recovery, while in others, more particularly those that develop an extensive secondary bronchitis and bronchiectasis it may persist for an indefinite period of time.

It is, of course, fully appreciated that the foregoing is in the main merely argumentative reasoning and it is put forth only to suggest that B. influenzæ merits a much closer scrutiny with respect to its etiologic relationship to influenza than the trend of present opinion has awarded it.