Severe, Sporadic Virus Pneumonias

Interest in virus pneumonia, judging by the few papers recently published on the subject, has waned since the War years when the disease was prevalent. The virus cause still is unproved, but the name virus pneumonia is used in preference to the ambiguous term atypical pneumonia. Any pneumonia, regardless of cause, whose characteristics differ from classic lobar pneumonia is atypical. According to a suggestion once made, virus pneumonia was the underlying process of most bacterial pneumonias. With the decline induced in the number of bacterial pneumonias particularly by sulfonamide compounds after 1939, virus pneumonias supposedly were unmasked or were left over, so to speak, after removal of the bacterial superinfection and thus were recognized and came into prominence. Such, however, was not the case. The increase in the incidence of virus pneumonias was real. The epidemics of mild disease of the respiratory tract, of which virus pneumonias represented the severest