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20
The following account is copied from the Registrar-General's
Annual Summary:—
"The deaths referred to Influenza during 1897 numbered
617 against 727, 2,117, and 491 in the three preceding years.
Although the deaths from Influenza in 1897 exceeded those in
1896 they were fewer than in any other year since 1890, the first
year of the Epidemic in London, and were less than half the
average annual number in the seven preceding years.
The cause of Influenza is yet unknown to us, though the
result of bacteriological investigation now being carried on may
go far towards elucidating the question.
The question as to the mode of spread of Influenza is one
that has most important bearings on the cause of the disease.
The most striking feature of this fever, and the feature in
which it differs from other specific fevers, has ever been the fact
that enormous numbers of people (spread over a vast extent of
country) may be affected simultaneously.
This has been noticed from the earliest records to the latest.
Thus, in 1557, the whole population of Spain was attacked on the
same day. In 1782, in St. Petersburg, 40,000 persons were
seized in a single day. In 1847 it was said to have spread in
one day over every part of London, and affected upwards of
500,000 persons.
These facts seem to admit only of one explanation that
(at least in the early period of an Epidemic) the cause of the
disease is carried by the air, and that the primary mode of spread
of the disease is through the atmosphere.