Page:Acute Poliomyelitis.djvu/14

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findings. Usually an organism resembling the Weichselbaum micrococcus was incriminated. Other investigators with similar material have however failed to obtain corroborative evidence of these discoveries. The efforts to demonstrate organisms in sections of affected tissues have likewise proved unsuccessful. Bonhoff by means of the Mann stain demonstrated in the glia cells, bodies which he alleges to be specific. The results of experimental investigation have shown that the bacteria found have absolutely nothing to do with Heine-Medin's disease, and that in those cases in which they arose not from faulty technique, such bacteria must be regarded as having had an accidental and not a causal relation to the malady.

Experimental Poliomyelitis in Monkeys.—Before discussing the recent successful inoculation experiments in monkeys, I shall first refer to earlier experimental researches upon acute poliomyelitis. Roger, Gilbert and Lion, Vincent, Enriquez, and Hallion; Thoinot and Masselin, Crocq fils; Ballet, Charrin, and Claude have produced poliomyelitis with various bacteria. But as I have already mentioned no one has succeeded in reproducing more than a vague semblance of the disease. I, myself, notwithstanding the extensive material employed, could obtain only negative results with streptococcal injections. The time has fully arrived when such experimental investigations should be discarded from the literature of this disease.

Landsteiner and Popper were the first experimentally to reproduce indisputable poliomyelitis. They took a piece of the spinal cord of a boy who had died of acute poliomyelitis and introduced it into the peritoneal cavity of a monkey. They were able to reproduce a disease characterized by paralysis and associated with the pathologic-anatomic changes of acute poliomyelitis. The results of Landsteiner and Popper were extended and corroborated by several observers. Similar investigations by Landsteiner and Prasek, Flexner and Lewis, Knopfelmacher, Leiner and von Wiesner, Romer, Romer and Joseph, Levaditi and Landsteiner, and Netter and Levaditi were carried out about the same time practically independently of each other.

It should be mentioned, in passing, that similar experiments have been made with many other animals, but no constant results have been obtained. Thus, Flexner and Lewis—who have done