Influenza Research Paper

Influenza Influenza, also known as the flu, is a common viral infection of the respiratory passage causing fever, and severe aching. It often occurs in epidemics. It can happen to anyone of any age, race, or sex. It affects most people during the winter. It is usually spread from person to person by them coughing, or sneezing on each other. However, sometimes it can be spread by people touching something that was recently contaminated with the virus and the touching their mouth or nose. Some of the symptoms are fever, aching muscles, headache, persistent cough, fatigue and weakness, nasal congestion, and sore throat. The first outbreak of influenza was in the summer of 1580 in Northern Africa, Italian accounts think that it spread from Malta to Sicily in July 1580 but it was not till 1918 that influenza was discovered. Influenza was discovered by J.S. Koen in Bloomington Illinois. Koen was a veterinarian who was researching a disease in pigs. He believed it was the same disease as the “Spanish Flu”. There has been pandemic reports for at least 500 years but, nobody quite knew what it was till about 90 years ago. In 1931, Rockefeller investigator, Richard Shope, published the first landmark papers on “swine influenza” the disease of pigs that had first been noted during the fall of a wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

It killed millions of people, the virus was mostly common in people between the ages of 20 and 40. It is uncertain where the first wave of the influenza outbreak started in 1918. Most evidence indicates that it appeared in the United States, but it attracted little attention because there were very few deaths. The next outbreak spread across North America, disrupting the operation of some military camps and a few factories. It was spread all over the continent in the spring and summer. In Switzerland alone during the month of July, 53,000 people succumbed to the Spanish