PROGRESS IN INFLUENZA

In spite of the fortunate absence recently of pandemics of influenza such as the one that occurred in 1918, progress nevertheless is being made in the understanding of this disease. In December 1936, according to Stuart-Harris,¹ a rather extensive influenza epidemic afforded the opportunity for correlating the clinical events in man with the isolation of the influenza virus from patients. The principal question throughout this work was whether influenza virus infection in man constitutes a clinical entity or not. This question has been answered in the affirmative both by this author and by others. The great improvement in the ability to study the disease is derived largely from the fact that the influenza virus can produce in the ferret a short fever, with lassitude, nasal symptoms and nasal lesions, or an illness accompanied by the development of lung lesions varying in extent up to fatal pneumonic consolidation. The method