PEDIATRICS Vol. 13 No. 6 June 1954, pp. 593-598
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow P3Rs: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when P3Rs are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow E-mail this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My File Cabinet
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by HORSFALL, F. L.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by HORSFALL, F. L., JR.

SPECIAL REVIEWS

CHEMOTHERAPY OF RESPIRATORY VIRAL DISEASES

FRANK L. HORSFALL JR. M.D.1

1 The Hospital of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York City.

Editors: JOSEPH STOKES JR., M.D..

THERE has arisen recently a tendency toward thinking that infectious diseases no longer present problems of social importance in the economically more advanced countries. This tend is more notable among a few biologists who are concerned with ideas about diseases than among physicians who are confronted daily with infectious diseases as established facts. The origin of the idea is easily traceable to the striking effects that modern antimicrobial drugs have had on the mortality of many severe infectious processes. Not only has the over-all mortality from microbial infections been diminished, but also, and more dramatically, the mortality in childhood has been greatly reduced. Judged from the viewpoint of the mortality statistician, the millennium is at hand and microbial infection need not be an important cause of untimely death. However, as every physician knows, infections are as common as in the old days and morbidity statistics have not been much improved by chemotherapeutic successes.

If viral diseases of the respiratory tract were the killers that untreated microbial infections of this tract are, no one could suppose that infectious diseases may be considered as only of minor importance. Although relatively few patients die of respiratory viral infections, the burden of disease they cause is enormous, greater than that of all other maladies in combination. It appears that mankind suffers throughout at least one-tenth of its life span from viral diseases of the respiratory tract. One may take the view that a cold on some other acute respiratory illness is an unpleasant inevitability which may go away in a week on so. However, the patient with one has a different view of the misery experienced and the time lost and knows, too, that another won't be too long in coming. His question is: What can be done to stop these things and let me get on with what I was doing?

At least seven separate viral diseases of the respiratory tract have been recognized and identified through careful study.

Submitted on November 5, 1953