STATUS OF PROPHYLACTIC VACCINATION AGAINST INFLUENZA

Abstract

When we consider the tragic experience through which the country and, indeed, the world, has passed during the last year, we realize that a great advance in preventive medicine would be made by the discovery of a prophylactic agent which would enable health authorities to control effectively epidemic influenza or the pneumonia that so often occurs as a complication. Perhaps at the outset it may be profitable to take stock of what we know about the etiology of influenza and the etiology and pathology of influenzal pneumonias. OPINIONS AS TO ETIOLOGY OF INFLUENZA AND INFLUENZAL PNEUMONIA Though the organism described by Pfeiffer in 1891 has long been known as the influenza bacillus, there really never has been convincing evidence of its relation to influenza, and the data that accumulated during the epidemic or epidemics here and abroad this past year have not contributed any confirmation to the view that this