Investigations on epidemic infantile paralysis : report from the State Medical Institute of Sweden to the XV International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, Washington 1912.

  • Karolinska mediko-kirurgiska institutet.
Date:
1912
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Investigations on epidemic infantile paralysis : report from the State Medical Institute of Sweden to the XV International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, Washington 1912. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    IO pharynx and nose of both human beings and monkeys had thus hitherto been unsuccessful and the question whether these secretions were a source of infection or not was still open. During some of the epidemics of infantile paralysis the observation has been made that gastro-intestinal disturbances not seldom occur at the beginning of the disease, before any pareses have yet appeared. Changes in the mucous membranes of the intestinal canal, such as hyperaemia and swelling of Peyer's patches and the solitary follicles have in fact been found rather often at the autopsy. Some investigators (Kratjse and others) have therefore been inclined to consider the mucous membrane of the intestine as the seat of en- trance of the infection. But the first experimental attempts to demonstrate the presence of the microbe in that membrane in order to support this view did not lead to the desired result.1 Landsteiner and Levaditi could not bring on poliomyelitis with a Berke- feld filtrate of the faeces of a monkey. The experi- ments by Leiner and v. WiESNER gave a similar result; neither could the microbe be found in the intestinal mucous membrane of the paralytic monkey. Strauss examined the intestinal contents of a human being attacked by poliomyelitis but found it non-virulent. Interesting are the observations made regarding the prevalence of the virus in some of the lymphatic glands connected with the mucous membranes above mentioned. Flexner and Lewis report, that they have succeeded in demonstrating the presence of the microbe in the mesenteric lymphatic glands of a child that died from 1 Leiner and v. WiESNER, however, by means of successful experi- ments on animals have shown that this way of infection is at least pos- sible in monkeys.