Influenza

Abstract

JUST ten years have passed since influenza became accessible to laboratory study through the discovery that ferrets could be infected with the causative virus. Since then, much has been added to our knowledge about the influenzas which have been prevalent. Ways have been found of infecting mice and other animals, of growing the virus in developing eggs and in tissue cultures, and of estimating antiviral antibodies. Unfortunately we do not know how to relate all this knowledge to the facts of the worldwide pandemic of 1918-19 ; we do not know whether that catastrophe is to be laid to the charge of either of the known influenza viruses, A and B, or to some other pathogenic agent. We cannot forget that the pandemic came on the heels of the War of 1914-18, breaking at a time when large numbers of American troops' were arriving in Europe. We therefore look rather apprehensively ahead, though taking some comfort from the fact that the last pandemic but one-that of the early '90s-was not associated with widespread wars.

Influenza

A Survey of the last 50 Years in the Light of Modern Work on the Virus of Epidemic Influenza. By F. M. Burnet and Ellen Clark. (Monographs from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Research in Pathology and Medicine, Melbourne, No. 4.) Pp. viii + 118. (Melbourne and London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1942.) 17s. 6d. net.