Drop of 18 In Deaths From Grip

• Drop of 48 to 30 in mortality rate between today and yesterday• New cases in the state 2863, including Boston total of 459 (?)• Physicians do not understand why pneumonia causing so many deaths. • Commissioner Woodward: “In all cases where death was brought about by pneumonia, the record shows that the pneumonia was not of the type ordinarily due to influenza. The health department has made an investigation, and from the reports of doctors has been able to establish this fact. The pneumonia deaths increased from two to 13 in a day, while during the same period of time the influenza mortality made practically no change. Why there should be such a difference it is impossible to understand. It may be that the ordinary type of pneumonia is now somewhat more prevalent than usual; deaths from this type of pneumonia last year at this time averaged nine a day.”• Commissioner Woodward: “For practical purposes, however, it is important to bear in mind that the same precautions that tend to ward off influenza also tend to prevent the spread of pneumonia.” • Board of Health criticized for including an update on “Mary Had A Little Lamb” in their bulletins. This version had Mary contract a “little cold,” which she takes to school with her “with disastrous results.” Critics called the poem “flippant.” Woodward defended poem, stating that it got out the message that colds can be dangerous and can help spread influenza. • Woodward: “I have no excuses to offer for the poem that appeared in the press this week on the common cold. I must, however, disclaim any poetical instincts or education, even those represented by the verses published. The verses originally appeared, as I tried to make it clear, some years ago in the official bulletin of the Chicago Board of Health and have since been more or less widely reproduced as legitimately health publicity.” [sic]• Woodward wants people to know that influenza had attack them more than once. Woodward: “It is not those who have never had the disease who must take care to avoid infection. Every person who has had it may have it again, either after he has apparently recovered or partly recovered. In some cases the germs may lurk in the system and break out in a recrudescence, again it may appear in the form of a new infection. A person who has become entirely well after an attack of the disease may have it once or twice again.”• Woodward: “This scourge influenza is worse than dynamite. If a man would be careful not to scatter dynamite around, why should he take chances with a prevalent disease? Coughing and sneezing in the ever-present crowd is a source of the greatest peril. It must be stopped.”• Woodward: “Where there are crowds there is danger, an actual danger lurking in every atom of the air. We do not know who is infected with influenza. The medical profession is in some doubt as to the exact method by which it spreads. But we know it does spread rapidly in assemblies of any sort.”• Woodward: “Walk to work. Then walk home from work. These should be the slogans of everyone nowadays. The exercise and the air are both beneficial and necessary in the present state of things. The more walking there is the less influenza we will have to treat. Let everyone get out and walk.”• Woodward: “Housewives should do their shopping early, when the stores are not crowded. If every woman who can does her shopping in the morning, it will materially lessen the department store crowds during the afternoon.”Newspaper article1