Influenza Quotes (6 quotes)
Influenza is a distinct disease, recognizable clinically by its epidemic proportions and extreme infectiousness, characterized pathologically by peculiar lesions in the lung, and caused by an unknown virus which gains entry through the respiratory tract.
Describing his findings from two autopsies, reported in a 1919 article. The influenza virus was eventually discovered in 1933 by Smith, Andrews, and Laidlaw. As quoted in Robert D. Collins, 'Dr Goodpasture: “I was not aware of such a connection between lung and kidney disease”', Annals of Diagnostic Pathology (Jun 2010), 14, No. 3, 194-198. [The original article is Goodpasture EW. The significance of certain pulmonary lesions in relation to the etiology of influenza. Am. J. Med. Sci. 1919;158:863–70.]
Influenza is something unique. It behaves epidemiologically in a way different from that of any other known infection.
In 'Foreword', Influenza: The Last Great Plague (1977), ix.
No one had ever picked my brains about influenza so expertly as he did.
[Recalling when had met young Jonas Salk, Ann Arbor (1943).]
[Recalling when had met young Jonas Salk, Ann Arbor (1943).]
In M. Burnet, Changing Patterns: an Atypical Autobiography (1968), 169.
Pestilences of many sorts have brought death and misery to mankind throughout history. Over the last 100 years most of these plagues have been brought under control; the black death, cholera, yellow fever, typhus, and smallpox no longer rage unchecked every few years. But there is one disease that continues to flourish and cause pandemics that sweep around the world periodically without restraint by modern medical science: the last of the great plagues is influenza.
In Preface, Influenza: The Last Great Plague: An Unfinished Story of Discovery (1977), x.
Since 1957, influenza epidemics have continued to be a major, serious, and intractable health problem, as frustrating to an action and control orientated epidemiologist as poliomyelitis has been gratifying.
(1971). As quoted in Nancy J. Cox, 'Prevention and Control of Influenza', The Lancet 2000 (Dec 1999), 354.
The year 1918 was the time of the great influenza epidemic, the schools were closed. And this was when, as far as I can remember, the first explicitly strong interest in astronomy developed ... I took a piece of bamboo, and sawed a piece in the middle of each end, to put a couple of spectacle lenses in it. Well, the Pleiades looked nice because the stars were big. I thought I was looking at stars magnified. Well, they weren’t. It was a little thing with two lenses at random on each end, and all you got were extra focal images, big things, but I thought I was looking at star surfaces. I was 12 years old.
'Oral History Transcript: Dr. William Wilson Morgan' (8 Aug 1978) in the Niels Bohr Library & Archives.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
