No Armistice Yet

The recent announcement of the discovery of the influenza germ at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, broadcasted by radio from the New York State Department of Health and given wide newspaper publicity, has on second thought, like so many other much-heralded scientific events, turned out to be less exciting than was at first supposed. The Journal of the American Medical Association, official organ of the medical profession in the United States, carries an editorial stating the residue of facts in the case, on the authority of Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the Institute.

The " discovery" is simply the summarizing of scientific papers published during the past three years by Drs. Frederick L. Gates and Peter K. Olitsky, of the Institute staff. A new microorganism, bacterium pneumosintes, has been isolated from the noses and throats of several patients with influenza, has been independently cultivated, and has produced influenza-like symptoms when injected into rabbits. Numerous other varieties of bacteria, such as Pfeiffer's bacillus, are usually present in these puzzling respiratory diseases, and it is not clear that the new organism is the invariable causal agent of influenza, though it is believed that it produces conditions in the lung tissues which facilitate the onset of pneumonia and other complications. No specific vaccine, or serum has yet been devised to combat the bacterium, nor has the work been confirmed by other observers. We are still a long way, therefore, from scientific control of epidemic influenza.