Show A Report to the State Department WASHINGTON Dec 24 George W iVurts in charge of the affairs of tho United States St Potci l legation in St fJ has sent the state department a unuuiu of the prevalence of I giipre in Russia with interesting comments He states that about the middle of November public attention was callod to the large number of persons falling ill with much the same mptoms as fever severe pains in the head back and limbs For lack of a better name he states the malady has been called influenza but it shows signs of a typhoid character though not of a malignant na turn and up to the date of writing Deccm her 5 no fatal case was reported The illness ness in most cases is very light and lasts but > a few days seldom longer than two weeks I leaves however all persona who have been touched by it debuitited and in great depression of spirits In fact the aftrmatho is rather more unpleasant than the complant itself The Cjuso of the epidemic has not been satisfctorilj explained ex-plained Most persons ascribe it to the abnormally ab-normally warm weather of the past month but that would not account for its appearance appear-ance in Siberia where it burst out in several places the weather there having been as cold as usual this season Now that winter seems to have fairly set inhere in-here it is expected the malady will disappear disap-pear but in the meanwhile nearly everyone every-one is affected There is no exaggeration in putting the number afflicted at nearly twothirds of the population In St Petersburg certainly not a house has escaped es-caped its visitation The Emperor was very ill with it several days and scarcely a member of the imperial family has been free from it More than forty thousand cases have been medically authenticated but these represent but a small portion of the sufferers |