South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1916-01-10
Nothing Modern
About Grip
BY Woods Hutchinson

one touch OF sneezing makes the
whole world kin. Even in this time
OF wOrld-shaking Armageddons and
lettering thrones and quivering ma
tional credits the burning question
Of the day everywhere. upon the
street. in the car. at public assem-
blies is: Have you got it?'
In fact, 50 nearly simultaneously
does the question rise to our lips
whenever we meet friend. that the
greeting is almost antiphonal. or re-
sponsive. like the Christmas saluta-
tiOns in Russia-One salutant giving
half. and the other the second half,
or the cheerful Colt strafe" vocal
epidemic which is now raging in
central Europe.
Misery Loves Company.
There is even sort Of consolation
about its ubiquity, because misery
dearly does love company. and
among the minor pleasures Of life
and most popular indoor sports not
the least is the cheerful sympathetic
swapping Of symptoms.
One, however. OF the subconscious
consultations which we give ourselves
about it is a pure illusion. and that
is that there is anything modern or
recherche and up-to-date about it.
ON the contrary. it is of a most re-
spectacle, not TO say venerable, an
tiquity; many OF our good things are
new, but most of our ills are old,
very old
World epidemics Of the grip under
various names have been clearly rec
/ Ognized ever since the fourteenth
century, and would probably have
/ been SO earlier had medical and Off
cial reporters been sufficiently intel
J ligeRt.
! It's very rame, influenza, goes back
to the middle ages and embalms the
popular Italian belief that 1t was due
To the malignant Influence" of a
star. or n comet, or some other Of the
heavenly bodies on account of the
rapidly and universally of its spread.
At least four clear-cut and world
encircling epidemics of il have been.
| recorded in the nineteenth century.
as well as many minor anO local ones
! the last of which was in 1SS9-90,
| with several echoes ard secondary
! reverbations in the decade follow
/ ing. The earliest of the four is said
10 have put the armies of both Ma
/ poleon and Wellington in the PENN
| sular campaign practically out OF
business for several weeks and to
have attacked and Frustrated nearly
third of the population of the Span
ish peninsula within four or five
/ days.
Where IL Comes From.
It's origin now is fairly clear and is
no more heavenly than ere the sem
| sations which it produces. 1t does not
come down from above in any sense,
hut up from below, from dirt; plain
Stewy, sweaty. steaming human dirt.
the kind that comes from overcrowd-
ing and infrequent additions and per-
petual seething in the steam of 9TH
er peoples breath.
Like many other things good and
4 bad it comes from the east. The
earlier great epidemics always
started in Russia and IL, the remotest
and most easterly prov noes at that,
so that i'm the seventeen and eigh-
| teen hundreds il was known as the
Russian influenza"
This. however. was an injustice to
the Great White Empire. for little
investigation quickly showed that Il
came into Russia with the tea cara
vans from western China. Western
China had caught it from central.
and finally it was traced back TO
that great seething human stew and
live, the Yangtse- valley.
Here or in the. sweltering race
slums of the south start all our great
world pestilences which We are able
to trace to their beginning, the black
death smallpox and cholera, and it
is also believed TO be the native
home of typhoid. tuberculosis and
pneumonia This is the real yellow
Peril, and the conviction is steadily
growing among sanitarians that to