Word: influenza
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...influenza epidemic, which the Hygiene Department doctors report "is not serious," has forced Stillman Infirmary to open an extra ward...
Electricity and gas were cut, advertising lights were out, hundreds of passenger trains were suspended, 20,000 dockers at three ports were on strike, 8,000 people had died since Jan. 1 from an influenza epidemic, and the King, his wartime savings exhausted, had to ask the government to take over ?40,000 of his expenses...
Sixty-four influenza-stricken M.P.s (35 Laborites, 29 Tories) got out of bed one day last week, went to the House of Commons, cast their votes. When the sneezing died down, the government had defeated, by 300 votes to 289, another Conservative attempt to topple it. The issue: a Tory motion censuring the government for Britain's critical coal shortage...
Headlined London's Daily : THE BUG is BOSS. It said, "The influenza bug ... can unseat the government any day . . . Government by influenza is the latest phase of a year in which Mr. Attlee has hung on to power by six votes." A greater threat to the government than influenza is an increasing public swing to the right. The latest British Gallup poll showed last week that the government has the backing of only 38% of the electorate compared to 43% two months ago and 46% four months ago. Tory support has increased from 44% four months...
Meanwhile, in Brighton, officials were battling a comparatively tiny but potentially far deadlier invader-epidemic smallpox. Compared to the sprawling, shapeless influenza blight, it was easy to pin down. The lethal virus had been brought to Britain by an R.A.F. officer who had flown in from Karachi to visit his girl friend, a Brighton telephone operator. It passed from the flyer to the girl to her father. The father died. Before the girl's case could be properly diagnosed, three nurses at the Bevendean Infectious Disease Hospital had caught it. The flyer's clothes had been sent...