The Alaska daily empire., 1918-12-28

body, and wreak injury, and (2) 1 the resistance of the individual that is the ability of the individu- al to prevent the germ from getting footing within his body. Accept | ing as our basis of argument, then | the ground that infection is de- 1 termined by the outcome of bat | tie waged between two living op- posing forces, the attacking germ and the invaded body, we find that there are many factors, some rela- | lively well established and others | but little understood, whose sum to- tai determines the fortunes of the battle
 CD Resistance of the individual. Different races, and even indi- viduals, differ in their powers of resistance to a given germ. More over, the resistance to disease of a given individual is apparently the result of the harmonious adjust , ment of a number of delicate fac tors, certain of which exhibit nat uraI fuctuation and other of which may be modified by relatively sim pie procedures. Hunger, fatigue, a sudden change in the weather, may be sufficient to turn the scale and cause normally resistant indi- infection.
 "(2) Virulence of the germ. Lust as the resistance, or de- tending power, of the body, is not constant, but is always subject to natural or artificial change, so do teria, that is their power of in vasion and of injury to the body varies. Not only do we find cer- tain kinds of germs which uniform ly are more virulent than others, but we know that there are often different strains, or races, of the same kind of germs, which differ greatly in their ability to injure ! the body after they have gained entrance to it. Moreover, it has /, been determined that the virulencC of many germs can be increased oi ! N'Si Se-cSN tOAaitCu Oi lOWCiCdJ ! Most germs lose in virulence wher grown outside of the body for a long time. Conversely, many germs gain in virulence when passed sue ] cessively through the body of a sus- ] ceptible animal. The streptococcus and pneumococcus, the germ which have been noted as being asso- <, ciated with in influenza bacillus ! have been shown to gain in viru- fence when passed successively through the bodies of a series of white mice. an animal very suscep- tible to the germs.
 "The bearing of the preceding upon a possible explanation of tho epidemic of influenza is as follows
 Remembering that any given in lection is an interplay between body resistance and injury -wreak
 ing powers of given germ, we may foffer some such hypothesis as this tThe pandemic or grippe originated
 probably in Spain, and thence fl
 spread rapidly over nearly all O
 Europe, including the warning ma
 tions of England, Italy, France ant
 Germany, in which from 30 to 4t
 per cent. of the people were at tackled.
 The congregation of large mum
 bers of individuals within camps
 intuition factories. etc, afforded
 the most ideal conditions for th'
 spread of these germs. During
 their passage through a large mum
 Der of individuals then virulenc'
 may have become raised and pos
 sibly this increased virulence O
 the attacking germs may be thu
 main reason for the severity in tn,
 United States. A certain air O
 probability seems to be lent to thi
 by the fact that the resistance O.
 individual does not seem to be { dominant factor with us. because Spanish influenza seems imIartially Ito attack the weak and the strong.