INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1520, 9 March 1916, Page 3

INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

No further cases of infant lie paralysis are reported in this district. The five patients ate reported as progressing satisfactorily. . . The total cases to date in the Auckland district is 340. One case reported from Wanganui. Eltham, Tuesday. A fatal case of infantile paralysis is reported—that of Timothy John M’Cartby, aged 33, a strong, vigorous farmer, who died after only two days’ illness. SUSCEPTIBILITY OF INFANTS.

The large proportion of cases among children under two years of age has been generally remarked- Discussing this point (reports the Auckland Herald) Dr Hughes said it seemed fairly certain that the disease entered by way of the raucous membranes of the mouth and nose. It was a physiological fact that these membranes were more easily permeable by micro-organisms in the infant under two years of age than in older children or adults, and the susceptibility of the former was increased by the probability that the membranes would be further weakened by the process of teething. Dr Hughes said experiments with monkeys bad shown that after scratching the membrane of the mouth a monkey was more easily infected with the disease than one which had not been so injured. The inferior powers of resistance to disease in the mucuous membranes was quite probably one of the principal factors producing the high attack rate in children under two years.

It is very necessary that the public, particularly the parents ot children, should co-operate in every way with the Health Department and the authorities, if the spread of the disease is to be averted. Through foolishness, and even mistaken sympathy, parents and others cSu menace entire communities. For instance, only a few days ago, in a country town in the Wellington district, says the Post, a child succumbed to the complaint, and the house was declared isolated. Yet the Health Authorities state that two ladies, parents themselves with young children, entered the place and stayed there in spite of all that bad been said ot the danger to their children ot such a course. A still worse aspect ot such foolishness was that their own children were attending the public school. The Health Authorities desire to impress upon the parents and the public generally that adults are “carriers” of the germs though they themselves may not develop the disease.

A Wellington resident has received a letter Irom a friend in Australia, in which it is stated that a mixture of ten parts of olive oil and one part of eucalyptus, sprayed up the nostrils twice daily, is being used in the Commonwealth with success as a preventative against infantile paralysis. The writer says that in many business establishments in Australia employers are requiring the members of their staffs to use the mixture regularly. AMERICAN INVE3TIGATIONS. BITING STABLE FLY A CARRIER. In an article entitled “Noguchi, the Man behind the Contagion Fighters,” a writer in Everybody’s Magazine refers as follows to recent investigations made by Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, of the Rockefeller Institute, into the cause and spread of infantile paralysis : From the fact Dr. Noguchi’s new method has proved of such utility in such a wide variety of species, and especially with those which so long defied detection, it may soon be possible to cultivate the germs of every i'll known to man or animals. In fact, this promise has already been brilliantly realised in two others of the most dreaded human infections, and this in the hands of the same gifted .investigator. The first o! these was the devastating epidemic among children which had come to be known as infantile paralysis. Although it has been recognised for half a century or more it is only in recent years that it has been shown to be infectious. Never very virulent in this country, a general epidemic appeared a few years ago on the southern border {of the United States), and followed a strangely irregular line southwards. It is estimated that from its ravages 15.000 or 20,000 children have been maimed for life.

Dr. Flexner, of the Rockefeller Institute, and his assistants had for years made a particular study of the contagion. They were able to show that it also was a “filterable virus,” and that they could inoculate one animal from another. Then Dr. Noguchi thought to try his new method in detection of "this micro-organism. A, large number of specimens from affected human beings, or monkeys, have been collected in the Rockefeller Institute, and, working with these, Dr. Noguchi was able to develop a vigorous growth by the same means he had used with siprochaetae. He found that pieces of the brain were much to be preferred to the spinal cord or other tissues, showing that in the brain, where they would be farthest removed from the presence of oxygen, these minute organisms thrived best. At the end of about five days’ incubation a faint whitish film appears about the

fragments of tissue at the bottom of the test tube, and alter three or four days more this extends to the whole of the fluid under the oil. From this fluid other tubes mav be Inoculated, and others still, from these, and so on in an endless series.

By means ot these pure cultures it is possible, by staining, to recognise the organism under the microscope, and from this to detect its presence in the tissues. It is exceedingly small, very near the limit of visibility, and in fluid cultures appears among the danc ; ing granules a minute globular bodies hanging together in chains, pairs, or small masses, devoid ol any mobility. Monkeys innoculated from these cultures showed unmistakably the symptoms and effects characteristic of the disease. Not all the cultures were sufficiently virulent to do this, which may be interpreted to mean that an animal or a child may be infected without showing any of the characteristic symptoms. This raises the possibility that the disease may be carried even by persons who seem well. An epidemic in Massachusetts started the State Board of Health there ou an investigation, which revealed the fact that, through a chain of villages which had been stricken, there ran a parallel epidemic of pig paralysis. It was inferred from this that pigs were carriers of the disease. But what was the intermediate carrier ? The ordinary house fly does not carry the disease, because it does not bite. But its first cousin, the little biting stable fly—first cousin in turn to the deadly tse-tse fly, which carries the sleeping sickness of Africa —is another kind of bird. The Massachusettes workers believe that this is the mam agent in the transmission of infantile paralysis; and Dr. Rosenau, of Harvard, has shown experimentally that the stable fly may transmit the disease. Thanks to Dr. Noguchi’s discovery, it will soon be possible to find out whether this is the sole means by which the infection is carried from one little sufferer to another victim.

Perhaps horses are also carriers or intermediate hosts of the same scourge, and perhaps some day we shall come to dread the bite' of these flies as much as intelligent people now dread a mosquito, a flea or a bed bug. Perhaps, for the same reason, we shall protect our hoises and carelnlly screen our manure piles, in which these deadly pests lay their eggs.