Report on the pandemic of influenza, 1918-19 / Ministry of Health.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Health
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the pandemic of influenza, 1918-19 / Ministry of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    As was anticipated, the results have not been sufficiently sub- stantial or uniform to lead us to any definite conclusions, though there are indications that the use of the vaccine did reduce in some cases the risk of fatality. Various forms of vaccine have been tried in different countries, hitherto without much success, for the reasons already given. The Prospect of the Future. 23. “The problem of influenza is still unsolved,” write the compilers of this report; “its solution will be one of the great events in the history of medicine.” And they go on to ask the inevitable question which arises in men’s minds, What is the world’s outlook upon future pestilences or dangers of pestilence ? The answer is that itis gloomy. ‘The conclusion to which we ‘are led is that the generation of a great pestilence such as influenza or pneumonic plague is dependent upon disturbance of social order involving for absolutely large numbers of human beings the endurance of conditions of insalubrity which afford for invading parasites a suitable field of modification. So soon as the new properties have been stabilised no barrier against the pandemic or epidemic extension will avail, nor will those individuals or nations who have not suffered the primary evils be more resistant to the disease than their fellows. No impartial spectator can doubt that at the present time, and almost certainly for a generation to come, there will exist in many nations and over wide tracts of country precisely the type of misery which we suspect to be the appropriate forcing house of a virulent and dispersive germ.” €¢ a nw Ge oe (a4 (74 t nw Ge 6 nw wn n wn n 24. The prospect is not cheerful, but we must face it with - equanimity and all the resourcefulness of the spirit of adventure and quest. One thing is certain, that the fundamental require- ment to make us masters of our fate is a universal improvement in the standard of health and the conditions of life. No _ technical device, no narrow or specific remedy for pestilence, can ultimately triumph apart from a sanitary environment for the community and the sound nutrition of the individual. They: are the bed-rock. Out of them spring the sources of national vitality. Hardly less certain is it that we require, and must seek till we find, more knowledge. We have in substantial degree the means of controlling tuberculosis and syphilis, malaria and plague ; we fail to control these four pestilences largely because we do not use the means ; and education is perhaps the answer to that. But in the case of influenza and its allies we are not yet in possession of the means, and whilst we press forward with the improvement of sanitation, of nutrition, and of the: conditions of life, we must apply ourselves anew to search and research into the causes of primary and secondary infections, -into epidemic catarrh and the common cold, into carriers, and
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