"X" DISEASE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 191, 2 May 1918, Page 8

"X" DISEASE

A FORM OF INFANTILE PARALYSIS EXPERIMENTS IN MYSTERY MALADY REVIEWED (By "Lulled:," in Die "Sydney Sun.") ■ Tho alarm which has been felt in Bro- l ken Hill and other parts of New South Wales at tho spread of a dangerous uew j disease, has been eet at rest.. According ! to an official statement "X" disease lias ': been identified by tho officers of tho New South Wales Health Department as polio- ' encephalomyelitis. This welcome information is modified ! by tho .statement that the high-sounding | disease is not au absolutely new one. j - "X" disoase, or the "mysterious" disease, ; ( niiiy oauso a shudder iu tho uninitiated; ( • the shock to tho avorngo man who hears I that ho has been exposed to "polio-encep- I halo-myelitis" would not be even more 1 startling. Inquiry, however, has elicited j tho fact that tho new disease is after all . only a somewhat unusual form of in- . fnntile paralysis. No ono seems to know . quite what polio-encephalo-myelitis is. . This hybrid term apparently means a diseaso affecting certain portions of the ' brain as well as the spinal cord, but there is more mystery about the term ' than about the disease. ; Mystery of Disease. Mystery surrounded tho affection known as infantile paralysis for very many ' years. In 1909 little was known of the ; causes which led to a very frequent form ; of paralysis ,in young childrei., more os- j pecially'in the northern parts of Europe. | [ Dootors recognised the diseaso eiter it j had become quiescent, and at u time I when little or.nothing could be done to restore tho lost power 'to tho musciea of j the wee sufferers. Two years before the j', same disease had suddeutly appeared dur-11 ing the summer and autumn in epidemic !, form in the United States and in Can- j j ada. It had apparently been imported j j from' Scandinavia, since the chief suiter- J ers were immigrants, at all events during ■ ! the early stages of the epidemics. Year j '. alter year it reappeared in the summer. | i Tho Norwegians began to think hard, ! and because the disease had apparently | been carried across the Atlantic, and had I spread among (ho Americans and Cana- j ; diatw the i lea chat it might be caused ! by a germ was the starting point of steady work. ( In IDOi) Landsteincr and Popper sue- ! j ceeded m giving the disease .(o monkeys j ■ by injecting serum from the spinal cord of a child who had died of the infantile ' paralysis into the abdomen. Tho diseaso ■ produced in the monkeys, however, tend- ' ed to die out, and all endeavours to pass ! it on to other animals failed. Simon ; Floxner, the Director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, came to ' the rescu,". and discovered that the germ causing tho diseaso seemed to have difficulty in travelling through tho available channels to the spinal,cord, when introduced in this manner. He found that ' direct infection of the cereal norvous system yielded quite different results, j: Experiments Succeed. From the time thc.-io direct inoculation . experiments were first carried o;ut, tho mystery surrounding the disease ya gradually dissipated. Ojw of the first difficulties which had to bo met was to explain how it was that huiimn beings, and particularly young children, were easily attacked, while the germ seemed indisposed to travel in the blood from a given point of entrance in the monkey to the spinal cord. I Tho paradox proved to be apparent, not real. It was soon proved that monkeys were not nearly fo susceptible to the disease as human beings, and, what is more significant, the germs, when they ■ entered the body of a child, found a short route within tho lymphatic vessels of the nerves from the nose to the upper part of tho spinal cord. Plexner and Lewis, Levaditi and Landsteiner made some desperate attempts to ispture the elusive germs, both in the baby and in the monkey. Time and again they thought that they bad caught thorn, but each report was followed by an announcement that the "prisoners" had made their escape. They held them securely in the fluid bathing the spinal cord, and in iho solid substance of tho cord i.tsclf. It was conceived that it would be » simple matter to catch tho little germ by passing the fluid through a dense porcelain filter, but he was so small that he wormed his way through ■ the pores of even the closest china.' This fact was immediately made use of by Hexner. He suggested that the identity of the germ of infantile paralysis

could not be established unless the substance containing it could lie filtered through a Chamberlain filter and the filtered fluid retained the capability ot giving rise to the same disease in monScicntists Baffled. ; This information appeared to satisfy (lie scientists who were carrying out the investigations. But the results of their experiments did not bring relief to the little patients. All attempts to trace (he manner in which babies ami children caught the disease- yielded guesses but few facts. It was suggested that the infection was passed on by dogs and other domestic animals.. Even the goat was incriminated The jury failed to agree, and the dog, cat, and goat were acquitted with a caution. The obvious precautions were taken, but jear alter year epidemics of varying seventy and extent occurred both in Europe andm America. The great outbreak in JNew York, and the eastern coast-lino of the States last year proved that the disease was by ho means in hand. Very many children wero affected, and the death roll was heavy. . Further hard thinking and following ii]) of dues led to the discovery of the fact that the blood serum of children who had recovered from an attack of infantile paralysis, when injected . into monkeys, prevented the development of the disease after artificial inoculation. It was but a step further to apply this method ot protection' to children during the course of at: epidemic. The serum was then used lo treat the disease, and, according io some accounts, it, has been attended by considerable success. During the recent epidemics it was j noticed that there wore numerous cases ) in which the symptoms wero unusual, j .Instead'of the i.vMicaJ pnraJysfe, thore I wero signs of disease, of the. brain. Iu ■ ! these cades the appearances wero not mi- ] i like those met with in cerebrospinal j I fever. These cases have occurred in ali most overy epidemic in .America sinco | 1901). Until it was recognised that in- 1 fnntile paralysis occurred in epidomics, ] these cases wer.°. mistaken for instance-: j of other diseases, and we're not regarded i as cases of infantile paralysis. h'lexner showed as long ago as 19J2 that the germs in these cases attacked the brain as well as (lie spinal cord, and thus produced the unusual symptoms. This form of infantile, paralysis has now appeared iu Broken Hill and elsewhere in New South Wales, but as it was not diagnosed it i has gained notoriety under the alias of "X" disease. i