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303
Appendix 1 to Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
INFLUENZA.
Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
Ordered by the Vestry to be Printed, 8th January, 1890.
Within the last two or three weeks the epidemic of
influenza, which has been spreading for some time over the
continent, and has reached America, has been introduced
into England; and is already prevailing largely in London.
It is a remarkable and interesting disease, which appears
only at rare intervals, spreads with extraordinary rapidity,
and usually disappears in the course of two or three months
from any locality which it happens to invade. It is in fact
the very type of an epidemic disease. It is often remarked
that it is a mysterious disease, and that its cause has not
been identified. This is true; but the same remark is
equally applicable to small-pox, scarlet fever, and most other
disorders of the same kind. They are all mysterious; the
specific causes of most of them have never been discovered;