CURRENT LITERATURE.
Epidemic Influenza. By Richard Sisley, M.D. (Longmans.)— Dr. Sisley has collected a number of interesting notes on the " origin and method of spread" of the disease. The conclusion that he comes to is that "the notification of influenza should be compulsory." There are, it is true, considerable difficulties in the way of carrying this suggestion into effect. The ailment is often not so serious as to require medical aid ; sometimes, it may be, the patient is himself not aware of it; he would often greatly resent forcible interference with his liberty. It is a curious fact, in view of the undoubted increase in the death-rate caused by the disease (this reached, almost simultaneously, a maximum of 43 per 1,000 in New York, and 31 in London), that the deaths among the assured of the Clergy Mutual were fewer in the quinquennium that included the influenza epidemics of 1890 and 1891, than that in corresponding period 1881-1886.
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