During the recent pandemic of influenza, September to November, 1918, several observations as to the nature and general character of the disease and of the epidemic have been made at U. S. A. Base Hospital, Camp Merritt, N. J. It is the purpose of the present work to present some of these observations with respect to: (a) the clinical and pathologic picture of influenza and bronchopneumonia; (b) the importance of secondary invaders in the latter part of the epidemic, and (c) the change in character of the latter part of the epidemic consequent on the activity of these secondary invaders.
In all the literature on this epidemic, both lay and scientific, certain distinctions have been made between influenza as such, and a concomitant or complicating bronchopneumonia. It has seemed to us more rational to regard this so-called "bronchopneumonia" not so much a complication as a severe manifestation of the disease