INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 March 1916, Page 2

INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

AMERICAN INVESTIGATIONS. 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 that Dr Noguclii'a new method has proven of such'utility in such a wide variety of apeeies, and especially with those which so long defied detec-. tion, it may soon be possible to cultivate the germs »f every ill known to man or animal's. In fact, this promise kas already been brilliantly..realised Jn,,..two others of the most dreaded human infections, and'this in tUf .hfljds of the saine gitted investigator. Theifrit'of the«e was the devastating, epidemic among children which has come to be know.n as infantile paralysis. Although it h»9 been recognised for half a century or more, it ia 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 northern border (of the 'United States), and followed a strangely irregular line southward, ft. is' estimated that from its ravigea .15,000 or 20,000 children have been maimed for life. ■ - i 'A LENGTHY SEARCH. . " Dr. Flexner, of the Rockefeller Institute, and his assiotants had f»r years made a particular study of this contagion. They were able to show that it also was a "filterable virus," and that they could inoculate one animal from another, But that was all. 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 mojikeys, 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 spiroch-aetae. 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 furthest 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 after three or four davs more this extends to the whole of the fluid under the oil. From this fluid other tubes may be inoculated and others still from these, and so on in an endless series. By means of these pure cultures It is possible by staining to recognise tlie organism under the microscope, and from this to detect its presence in the tissues. It is exceedingly small, very near the limit to visibility," and in fluid cultures appears among the dancing granules as minute globular bodies hanging together in chains, pair or small massed, devoid of any motility. Monkeys inoculated 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 pos--sibility that the disease may he carried even by persons who seem well.

THE CARRIERS. ' " 'An epidemic in Massachusetts started the State Board of Health there on an investigation which revealed the fact that through a chain of villages wich 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 probably does not carry the disease, because it does not bite. But its first cousin, the little biting stable fly—first cousin m turn of the deadly tse-tse fly. which carries the sleeping sickness of Africa —is another kind of insect. The Massachusetts workers believe that this js the main agent in the transmission of infantile paralysis; and.Dr. Rosenau, of Harvard, has shown experimentally that the stable fly may transmit tlie disease. Thanks to Br. Noguchi's discovery. it will noon be possible to find out whether ttWa is the sole means by which the infection is carried from one little sufferer to another victim. Perliapn Jiorses are also carriers or perhaps wide day we shall come to dread the bite of theso flies as much as intelligent people now dread the mosouito, a flea or a bed-bug. Perhaps for the .same reason we shall'protect oiir hor«e and carefully screeji our manure piUs in which these deadly pests lav ft«lr egg?. '