Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1890-01-11 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

LADIES' COLUMN.  iror some people unpleasant topics of convents-lion have a particular attraction. They love to read of murders, suicides, details of fearful ill nesses, and tribulations of all kinds. To sup on horrors would never satisfy these social ghouls, for they would like to breakfast, lunch, and dine upon  'them also. Even 5 o'clock tea cannet l‘e  sipped in comfort, because some ghastly topic  is dragged in by head and shoulders. duet at resent the influenza. epidemic is joy to these ban quetters on woes. They rush to the newspaper the  moment it is brought in, and befo-re. there has been time to brace nerves with a little breakfast, the assembled family bas to hear the mares of all the illustrious patients, and listen to the chronicles of the whee7ing from China to Peru. The panic at present abroad is very hard on business people. The severe cold of an employe  at other times not proclaimed aloud must now be taken in hand vigorously, and every assistant who  sneekes is at once sent to bed. The sales of surplus  stocks upon which traders reckon to get rid of their accumulations are beriously affected by the panic. The alarmists go about collecting  statistics of the number of employOs in certain houses of business laid aside, and as a natural result ladies hesitate to make purchases in a shop, the whole atmosphere of which may possibly be impregnated with influenza germs. The good spirits in which doctors seem to he going about is the most aggravating feature of the  visitation, for they really are reaping harvests. From the nursery down to the kitchen every mistress of a household insists on clean bills of health,  and he cheerfully fees the medical man who Ee ta  her fears at rest.  influenza is no new isitation. Three bund red years ago, in Scotland, Queen Mary's  Indies -in - waiting were prostrated by the epidemic brought from France, though their royal mistress escaped. John Evelyn, writing in 16M, describes an epidemical cold rife all over Europe like a plague after a very dry summer and autumn. Mr. Evelyn does not account for his having taken this Severe cold, to which so tine a name had not then been given, but he had been dining at Kensington with an old acquaintance,Mr. Henshaw,  who had just returned from Peumark, where he  went with the then Duke of Richmond as ambeEsador.  This was 108 years after the first visitation. and after $ similar lapse of time we hear of the same visitation to Europe, on the authority of no less a man than the late Sir Robert Christison,the Scotch physician. The British fleet was watching the Dutch ships in the Tine]. and an officer from each ship was signalled to go on board the Admiralty cutter. The boats' crews brought back the influenza, and the whole fleet suffered. Out of .',25 men on board one ship, only two men were available to wait upon the  others. The Dutch fleet might have taken advantage of the he:plessness of the British fleet, but that they were themselves in the same plight. The seamen are described as being suddenly seized,and dropping down beside their guns completely exhausted. Probably under less rigid conditions of discipline the men would have been in hospital at earlier stages. One hundred and eight years have now elapsed, and the foe is upon us again, but certainly with symptoms much mitigated, for recovery is more rapid, though the possibility of the illness being communicated by one person to another is proved by the seizure of Lord Salisbury's two private secretaries. Among the safe remedies, or at best preventatives, are quinine taken at an early stage, oranges eaten literally all through, and warm baths with the use of terebene soap and friction to keep up temperature and promote frte circulation.