Ashley Sterne Fighting the Flu

Here is a short extract of a London Opinion article by Ashley Sterne that was republished in The Sphere, vol 88, 1922.

Fighting the 'Flu

One of the chief difficulties in 'flu-fighting is that of correctly diagnosing the complaint in time, for no two cases of 'flu are exactly similar in symptoms.  I have known a man return home from the City with a frontal headache that stuck out in knobs, an unconquerable thirst, and an obliquity of vision such as one usually associations with an inmate of the Keeley Institute, and go straight off to bed with the impression that he had got the flu good and plenty, whereas the whole of his sufferings were actually attributable to his having correctly guessed the weight of the cheese at Simpson's.  On the other hand, I know another man who recently arrived home with a temperature high enough to cook an omelette or rear an orchid, and he attributed it solely to his having sat next to a lady in the train who was reading one of Mrs. Elinor Glynn's more calorescent novels, whereas he was in reality so full of active 'flu microbes that if they had all shoved simultaneously in the same direction they could have pushed him over. – Ashley Sterne in London Opinion.