La Grippe and World War I: conflict participation and pandemic confrontation.

This paper assesses whether a nation-state's participation in conflict influences its ability to confront global pandemic or disease. Two alternative hypotheses are proposed. First, increased levels of conflict participation lead to increased abilities of states to confront pandemics. A second and alternative hypothesis is that increased conflict participation decreases the ability of states to confront pandemics. The hypotheses are tested through the ultimate case of war and pandemic: the 1918 Influenza pandemic (Spanish Flu or 'La Grippe') that killed 20-100 million people worldwide. Using simple correlation and case illustrations, we test these hypotheses with special focus upon the ability of the participant countries to confront the pandemic. The findings suggest, in a limited and varied fashion, that while neutral countries enjoyed the lowest levels of pandemic deaths, of the participant countries greater levels of conflict participation correlate with lower levels of pandemic deaths. The paper concludes with some propositions regarding the relationship between the current 'war on terror' and prospective pandemics such as avian flu.

Treatment of stress-induced upper gastrointestinal/hemorrhage with metiamide.

The H-2-blocking antihistamine metiamide was used to treat 14 episodes of bleeding from the stomach or duodenum in eleven patients. In 11 instances bleeding was due to erosive gastritis or duodenitis and bleeding promptly ceased after one or two doses of 300 mg at 6 h intervals and did not recur as long as the drug was continued. In the 2 instances in which bleeding continued, chronic ulcers had eroded into major blood-vessels. There were no complications from the drug even in five patients with severe bone-marrow suppression after renal transplantation. Metiamide seems to be a safe and highly effective agent in the control of bleeding due to erosive gastritis.