Note 1 — INTRODUCTION

The history of the epidemics of influenza cannot but impress one with the difficulties of medical progress. Beyond the fact that the descriptions of the epidemics are such that the disease is recognizable as being the same, there is little of real value in the literature until the beginning of the 19th century.

In the 18th century the infectious nature of the malady had been recognized. The results of study in the first half of the 19th century are shown in the literature of the epidemic of 1847–49. In it, exceptionally good clinical descriptions and epidemilogical studies are published. In the next forty years great strides were made in Pathology and in the essentially new science of Bacteriology. With those two aids in the study of infectious disease, it is only reasonable to expect an increase in knowledge of influenza after the epidemic of 1889–90. Such is the fact and a comprehensive review of both the Bacteriology and Pathology of this disease is offered in Nothnagel’s Specielle Pathologie, 1896, Bd. IV, by O. Leichtenstern.