Influenza—The Native Kind

I WAS interested in a remark made to me recently by Mr. G. A. Loudon, of Papua. “I have had a bad attack of influenza—the native kind,” he said.

Medical science may not agree with this —but observations over many years indicate to me that if a European con tracts influenza per medium of a South Sea Islands native he will get a far worse attack than if he had contracted it directly from another European, in a European community. I am reminded of what happened to the officers and crew of the Union Steam Ship Co.’s ves sel, “Atua”, years ago, when the “black ’flu” raged in the Pacific. The “Atua” carried a deck crew of Fijian natives, and they suffered badly from influenza.

When the “Atua” came to Sydney at the end of a regular voyage, every man aboard was down with the epidemic, and the vessel was placed in quarantine.

Some of the white officers and crew died.

The chief engineer, a big, strong, healthy Scotsman named McMaster, was among those who recovered. A few years later, Mr. McMaster died in the Blue Moun tains' from tuberculosis—the direct result of that attack of black ’flu. I was told that he was the last of the “Atua’s”

European complement—that every one of

those Europeans who contracted the disease per medium of the Fijians, and apparently recovered, died within the following four or five years.

It is suggested that when the germs of influenza pass through the bodies of primitive peoples, who have not built up in the course of centuries a kind of resistance to the disease, they attain a new, explosive force, which is deadly when they reach the bodies of the resist

ant Europeans.-

Dr. N. H. Fisher, Government vulcano logist at Rabaul, New Guinea, arrived in Australia recently on furlough.