Word: influenza
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After World War I, the pale horse of pestilence galloped unchecked across Europe. How many people died from influenza, typhus, relapsing fever, malaria, typhoid and smallpox was never recorded, but flu alone killed an estimated 16,000,000. After World War II, the pale horse and his rider never really got started. Health authorities think it was partly a matter of luck. But Europe's, and Asia's, amazing escape from pestilence was also partly due to UNRRA. The story of its great work was told last week in a final bulletin by its health division...
...most portentous threat lies in the fact that the United States now stands at the wrong phase of two distinct influenza cycles. An influenza pandemic, which recurs every twenty to thirty years, has not been visited upon the world since 1918, when it killed twenty-one million people of whom half a million were Americans. The pandemic virus has been due to strike again since 1937. Less powerful viruses, the more common influenza "A" or "B", tend to run in five or six year cycles. Both are set for a re-appearance, since neither has been detected in epidemic form...
...with only ten states reporting, the ten leading causes of death were: 1) pneumonia and influenza; 2) tuberculosis; 3) diarrhea, enteritis and intestinal ulcers; 4) heart disease; 5) cerebral hemorrhage; 6) nephritis (kidney inflammation); 7) accidents; 8) cancer; 9) diphtheria; 10) premature birth...
...drugs and penicillin have taken the edge off pneumonia. Tuberculosis has yielded somewhat to better treatment and early X-ray diagnosis. To take their places, non-germ diseases have moved up. Last year's list: 1) heart disease; 2) cancer; 3) cerebral hemorrhage; 4) nephritis; 5) pneumonia and influenza; 6) accidents (except motor vehicle); 7) tuberculosis; 8) diabetes; 9) premature birth; 10) motor vehicle accidents...
...Since influenza seems to be a regular aftermath of war, U.S. health officers have been on the lookout for an epidemic. Last week they were pleased to note that so far flu had been unusually hard to find. The season's total to date-26,977 cases-is only one-ninth that for the same period last year. The Army, too, has the lowest rate of colds and flu in years. Though spring is still a long way off, health officials hopefully observed that a flu epidemic, if it comes at all, is usually well under way by November...