Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1919 — “FLU” SERUM USELESS [ARTICLE]

“FLU” SERUM USELESS

Physicians Are Still Hunting for a Preventive. U. S. Laboratory Director Saya No Cure for Baffling Disease —- Is Known. .•======* New' York —Considering that the insurance companies of the United States lost about $130,000,000 during the three months last year when the influenza epidemic w r as at its height, it was but natural that when the Association of Life Insurance Medical Directors met in annual convention in Newark the physicians and public health authorities* should concern themselves almost exclusively to the search for some preventive measure which would preclude another outbreak of the plague. And yet, although it was shown that about 6,000,000 people In the world perished from it, 400,000 of whom were Americans, all the medical experts admitted that the disease was completely baffling. Said Dr. G. W. McCoy, director of the hygienic laboratory of the public health service In Washington. “There Is no serum that I know of

which is of the slightest value in preventing Influenza, nor is there a serum thflt Is of any use whatever In the treatment of tho disease.” He made this statement after carefully experimenting with serums and vaccines in all parts of the country where the disease had broken out, and particularly in Pelham Bay and the army camps where the mortality was great.