Table 1.
Bacterial culture results in autopsy series involving 96 postmortem cultures of lung tissue from victims of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic.
| No. (%) of cultures from which organism was recovered, by organism | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type of autopsy series |
No. of results |
Streptococcus
pneumoniae |
Streptococcus
hemolyticus |
Staphylococcus
aureus |
Diplococcus
intracellulare meningitidis |
Mixed pneumopathogens |
Bacillus
influenzae |
Other bacteria |
No growth |
| All military (n = 60) | 3515 | 855 (24.3) | 615 (17.5) | 263 (7.5) | 40 (1.1) | 707 (20.1) | 387 (11.0) | 484 (13.8) | 164 (4.7) |
| All civilian (n = 36) | 1751 | 380 (21.7) | 281 (16.0) | 164 (9.4) | 1 (<0.1) | 398 (22.7) | 132 (7.5) | 339 (19.4) | 56 (3.2) |
| All military and civilian (n = 96) | 5266 | 1235 (23.5) | 896 (17.0) | 427 (8.1) | 41 (0.8) | 1105 (21.0) | 519 (9.9) | 823 (15.6) | 220 (4.2) |
| All higher- quality military and civiliana (n = 68) | 3074 | 712 (23.2) | 553 (18.0) | 238 (7.7) | 21 (0.7) | 828 (26.9) | 144 (4.7) | 353 (11.5) | 225 (7.3) |
| Predominance of Pneumopathogens not confirmed (n = 14) | 1115 | 209 (18.7) | 132 (11.8) | 52 (4.7) | 0 (0.0) | 24 (2.2) | 210 (18.8) | 402 (36.1) | 86 (7.7) |
NOTE. The bacteria are listed by their common names in 1918. Streptococcus pneumoniae was cultured and (sometimes) typed with antisera into types I, II, IIa, III, and IV; type IV was generally regarded as containing a number of “untypeable types.” Streptococcus hemolyticus probably corresponds to Streptococcus pyogenes in most cases; most observers distinguished Staphylococcus aureus from Staphylococcus albus, but in some cases observers noted only “Staphylococcus,” which we categorized as “aureus” if the context suggested a pathogenic organism. Diplococcus intracellulare meningitidis corresponds to Neisseria meningitidis. Bacillus influenzae corresponds to Haemophilus influenzae. See Results for details about the “mixed pneumopathogens” and “other bacteria” categories. Many “other” organisms were undoubtedly untyped pneumococci and streptococci. Bold type indicates greatest percentage.
A higher quality series was defined as a series in which lung tissue culture results reported, for all autopsies, both the presence and absence of negative culture results and the bacterial components of mixed culture results.