One of the hardest things to do in the treatment of a serious, self-limited, infectious disease is to refrain from prescribing drugs merely because the diagnosis has been made. The self-restraint of the level-headed physician is likely to be swept aside by the thought of the possible grave consequences of the malady, and his accustomed good judgment is apt to be smothered in the semihysterical atmosphere of alarm that pervades the community during the visitations of the epidemic. He forgets that a large proportion of patients with influenza do not need a single dose of medicine. There should
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