PREGNANCY COMPLICATED BY EPIDEMIC INFLUENZA

Influenza and pneumonia are, without any question, extremely grave complications of the pregnant state. Until the recent outbreak of epidemic influenza, however, there seems to have been either little opportunity or no great effort to study any number of such cases appearing in groups in which the infective organism, seasonal conditions and general treatment were similar. Following the epidemic of 1889-1890 a few articles appeared in various European journals, but the opinions and findings of the different writers were not especially convincing nor were they by any means uniform. Most of the articles were published long after the epidemic was past and interest had died down, so that they were merely of historical value and the lesson in them was lost. Consequently, with the outbreak of the recent epidemic we were quite unprepared for the appalling loss of life among pregnant women affected by this disease. Hintze,¹ Vinay,²