Medicine: Flu Epidemic

Under mild and smiling western skies, an epidemic of influenza flared last week in California, swept into Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. Apparently the virus was brought from Hawaii, which had been hit by flu. Worried citizens feared a repetition of the great pandemic of 1918-19, but the Army's Surgeon General James Carre Magee assured them that it was not the same sort of flu. Despite the wildfire contagion, symptoms everywhere were mild. Most of the victims had only slight fever, sniffles, headache, sore limbs, backache, a tight feeling in the chest. Although Los Angeles had about 50,000 cases, only 70 deaths had been reported at week's end. mostly among people who were finished off by pneumonia. But in many communities, daily life was completely disrupted. Local disruptions:

— Several days before their football game with Notre Dame, 16 varsity members of the University of Southern California team came down with flu. Also stricken were Head Coach Howard Jones and the team's doctor, Delos Packard Thurber. The Trojans lost.

— In San Francisco, where many hospital staff members fell sick. Health Officer Jacob Casson Geiger asked for a $7,500 appropriation to hire substitutes, ordered postponement of all operations except for emergencies.

— In Los Angeles, with over 700 teachers, about 29% of the school children ill, schools still ran.

— In new training camps along the West Coast, thousands of soldiers were down with flu. At Fort Lewis, Wash., about 1,400 men were confined to tents and canvas field hospitals. Popular treatment: an aspirin and a glass of gin. ^ In Hollywood almost half of the movie stars were sick in bed. Some who went to work wore surgeons' masks for protection.

Ever since the days of Hippocrates (400 B.C.), huge tides of flu have washed the world. Contrary to popular opinion, the epidemics have not always run in cycles of 20 years. In modern times the span between them seems to be around three decades. A wave of flu inundated Europe and the U. S. during the 1830s; others followed in 1847, 1889. Greatest epidemic in history was the scourge of 1918-19, which killed more than 20,000,000 people all over the world, more than half a million in the U. S. alone. Last year Ihe Journal of the American Medical Association predicted a great epidemic for 1940 or 1941.

Flu may be caused by a number of mysterious organisms. Only one group of these is known to science: Influenza Virus A, identified seven years ago. This is the virus now rampant on the West Coast.

Recently Dr. Frank Lappin Horsfall Jr. of the Rockefeller Institute made a vaccine from Influenza A and the virus which causes distemper in dogs. He hopes it will confer immunity for at least three months from all types of flu. Last week a test group of doctors and nurses in Los Angeles County General Hospital volunteered for vaccination. About 100,000 persons in selected communities throughout the U. S. have also been vaccinated. The next few weeks may provide a sure test of the vaccine, for the epidemic, already waning in the West, seemed to be moving east at week's end.