Influenza: Its Control in Persons and Populations

Abstract

It began with a roughness of the jaws, small cough, then a strong fever, with a pain of the head, back and legs; it felt as though there was a weight over the breast and at the stomach; all which continued to the third day at the farthest; there the fever went off with a sweat and bleeding at the nose. In some cases, it turned to pleurisy, or fatal peripneumony [1]. This case description is from what surely was an in-fluenza epidemic in the year 1557 and is similar to influenzal illnesses seen currently. The pattern of oc-currence of influenza is for millions of such cases to occur in epidemics. Hippocrates referred to an epi-demic in the year 412 B.C., and history has recorded many influenza epidemics and pandemics since that time. In 1974, an Influenza Research Center (IRC) was established at Baylor College of Medicine (Hous-ton). It has been devoted primarily to obtaining an-swers to many of the epidemiological questions relat-This address was presented at the 23rd annual meeting of the