Will the Epidemic Spread to Shanghai? China a Danger Spot: Quarantine?
Although influenza, has broken out on a large scale in Japan, 40,000 cases having been reported from Tokio alone, from inquiries made yesterday it appears exceedingly improbable that rigorous quarantine restrictions will be imposed on ships from Japamese ports.
The decision would rest in the hands of the port medical authorities, who might deem it advisable to quarantine a vessel if a large number of serious cases were known to be on board. But the imposition of quarantine for the disease is not often done. It will be remembered that in 1918 and 1919, when the so-called Spanish influenza was prevalent in Shanghai, the precaution was not considered necessary.
Precedents, however, are not wanting to prove that many a world-wide epidemic of the disease. has spread first. over China and thence to Europe. A vast, dirty and semi-fed population, such as China's, owing to the average three-day period of incubation of the influenza organism, can propagate the disease to an alarming extent within as many weeks, It is thought that China may have been responsible for the virulence of the disease in Europe during 1918.
A prominent local vhvsician, interviewed by a "North-China Daily News"—representative yesterday gave the following interesting facts from the latest accumulated data concerning the incidence and nature of the disease:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.