A thousand old wives' tales hold that there is a close connection between a woman's illnesses during pregnancy and the health of her baby, but medical researchers were long unable to prove anything except the damaging effects of German measles in the first three months of gestation (TIME, Dec. 31, 1956). Then came the 1957 midsummer warning that an epidemic of Asian influenza was imminent, and physicians braced themselves for a test. Last week, in the London medical journal Lancet, two Irish investigators reported that Asian flu is a potent cause of fetal abnormalities, many of them fatal.
Drs. Victoria P. Coffey...
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