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disinfected. Many children were excluded from schools, and some
adults from occupation, but no schools, factories or workshops were
closed. The Public Health (Influenza) Regulations, 1918, were
enforced. In London, thanks to the public press, much useful
information with reference to the disease promptly reached the
public, and therefore it was judged unnecessary to issue handbills.
Fuller measures were prejudiced by the shortage of doctors and
nurses—the stress under which the former were working throughout
the epidemic was responsible for the fact that there was a minimum
of co-operation between them and the Public Health Authority,
but it should be added that the assistance of the Public Health
Authority was greatly restricted by the circumstance that it was
difficult to ascertain where the cases were in the absence of notification.
The notification of Acute Influenzal Pneumonia in 1918
would have been a great assistance by the information it would
have afforded of where the cases most needing advice, home-nursing,
hospital treatment or other assistance, were to be found.
The oocupants of overcrowded and ill-ventilated dwellings are
generally believed to suffer from an exceptional incidence of this
disease. There were circumstances which came within our experience
during the epidemic which lent support to this very prevalent
belief.
The epidemic impressed the need for a promptly available
supplementary personnel for temporary employment in times of
emergency. In epidemics of Influenza, Measles and Whoopingcough
for instance such a voluntary personnel suitably trained
could furnish valuable assistance to the public health staff and to
the nursing service, if only by ascertaining the cases which are
really necessitous. Our war experience confirms the view that
there must be some in every community who would be willing and
able to volunteer for such emergency services, if they were invited
to do so,