'Flu In Tahiti
p. 25 · Read in the full issue
A Gift of the Honky-tonks
From Our Own Correspondent
Papeete, Aug. 26.
A SHIP has come in; and, through the medium of those fetid incubators, the honky-tonks, we have another epidemic of influenza. I In the hot, crowded rooms, where tour ists once gathered to see the raw, wild life of the South Sea, the air is like agar-agar. One cough by a convalescent sailor, and the whole assembly is infected.
It is extraordinary how honky-tonks, all over the world, have that same dead atmosphere redolent of bad spirits and unwashed humanity. Synthetic perfumes and scented rouge serve only to accentu ate the suffocating quality of the basic taint.
The same type of player presides at the rusty-stringed piano, the same scratchy records whirl in the gramophones, from the Barbary Coast of San Francisco to the dark alleys of Zanzibar. Attempts at ventilation appear merely to stir up the noisome atmosphere and to stimulate the bacteria to more efficient activity.
At the end of a hectic evening the joy ous company disperse to their several homes —and we have another epidemic of influenza.
It is a matter of record that one con valescent of the s.s. “Talune” infected all of Samoa during the world-wide scourge of so-called “Spanish influenza,” and decimated the population.
So far, our Allied medical services have kept .epidemics under control. It may be. therefore, that the world will be spared a tragedy such as followed World War I.
The honky-tonks along the waterfronts of the world are, however, waiting expectantly to propagate anything which may slip through the cordon of our medical defence.