During the recent epidemic of influenza and influenzal pneumonia, we were impressed with the marked degree of asthenia present in all cases. No matter how mild the attack, asthenia was almost invariably one of the most, if not the most, prominent symptom. It was usually out of all proportion to the other symptoms and persisted not only during the attack but far into convalescence. When we review the summaries of chief complaints recorded in the literature, we find that this was the general observation. Certain symptoms were more common in some localities than in others, but asthenia was the symptom common to the disease in all localities.
In our series of cases1 we were unable to satisfy ourselves with the prevailing belief that the prostration was due to cardiovascular disease. Our attention was called to the possible existence of disturbed function of the suprarenal glands early in the epidemic, whereupon