INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5142, 22 June 1927, Page 3

INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

MONKEYS EXPERIMENTED UPON.

NO DEFINITE ADVANCE.

It is not generally known that a regular supply of monkeys come into New Zealand for experimental purposes. This fact was disclosed by the Hon. J. A. Young, Minister of Health, when speaking at Hamilton on Mon‘day night. These monkeys, said the Minister, were used for investigating the nature and causation of infantile paralysis. Following upon the epidemic •of 1925, he said, the New Zealand Division of the British Medical Association made representations to the department as to the desirability of carrying out an inquiry into this disease. Dr. Hector was appointed to undertake this work, his salary being provided by the- Health Department, and arrangements were made with the Otago Medical School for the work to be carried out in that institution. The inquiry necessitated obtainingmonkeys from Calcutta, but this was arranged and regular supplies havebeen coming to hand since that time. The inquiry had however, met with several difficulties, the. main one being the -fact that Dr. Hector had to depend upon material from the 1925 epidemic, and it had been exceedingly difficult for him to obtain fresh infective material. , While considerable progress had been made in mastering the- difficult technique which surrounded the problem from the laboratory side, and which included the proper care and attention of the monkey (an animal with which previously we- have had .no experience), no definite advance could be claimed in regard to our knowledge of the disease-