[145] _Ibid._, 1870, vol. l, pp. 430, 516, and vol. li, p. 11.
Pneumonia is an infectious disease, and a pregnant woman should, for her own sake and the sake of the fetus, avoid exposure to infection. When the disease is present the last sacraments should not be deferred, as it may be impossible to make a confession when near death.
Influenza in pregnancy is more severe than it is in the non-gravid state. By the laity, and sometimes even by physicians, influenza is confused with la grippe, but there is an influenza vera and an influenza nostras, or la grippe, and this latter is not nearly so serious a disease. The real influenza is caused by a specific bacillus; it appears in epidemics which have a tendency to become pandemic, and then the disease disappears for a generation. La grippe is a bronchitis or coryza with some fever and muscle-soreness. True influenza (the name is Italian, _influenza di freddo_) is very infectious. The pandemic of 1889-90 started in Turkestan in June, 1889, and by October, 1890, influenza had gone westward and encircled the earth along the trade routes. The preceding pandemic occurred in 1847-48.
There is no clear proof that pregnant women are especially liable to infection by influenza, but there is always a notable fall in the birth-rate after marked epidemics of the disease. This has been observed in France, Germany, and Switzerland. When it does occur in pregnancy it is likely to cause abortion. Pasquier, as early as 1410, noticed this fact. The disease is likely to cause hemorrhage from the uterus in non-gravid women, especially in those who are past the climacteric, and menorrhagia in younger women who are not pregnant. Moeller[146] found abortion or premature labor in 28.3 per cent. of twenty-one severe cases. In severe influenza where there is diffuse capillary bronchitis, pleuropneumonia, or spasmodic cough, abortion is most likely to occur, and such abortion is always dangerous. The hemorrhages in abortions from influenza are often alarmingly profuse.
[146] _Deutsch. med. Wochensch._, 1900, No. 28.
In threatened respiratory or cardiac failure in influenza complicating pregnancy there may be question of therapeutic abortion, but in such an event great care must be taken to avoid exhaustion and shock. The child should be extracted; the woman should not be made to labor. One of the important moral considerations in this matter of influenza and pregnancy is that the woman commits grave sin if she needlessly exposes herself to infection, because of the danger to the child's life and the risk of its loss without baptism, and also because of the danger to her own life.