A year or so ago Dr. C. Armstrong of the United States Public Health Service announced that he had succeeded in transmitting poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) from the monkey to the eastern cotton rat and later from the cotton rat to the white mouse. If verified all this was highly important. Rats afe cheaper than monkeys and breed rapidly. But Dr. Armstrong's results were not generally accepted because others failed to duplicate them.
Now come Drs. C. W. Jungeblut and Murray Sanders of Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons not only with a complete confirmation of Dr. Armstrong's findings but with new information of their own to shed a flood of light on a disease which is particularly virulent among the young. Drs. Jungeblut and Sanders report their work in the Proceedings of the Society of Experimental Biology.
Only one of five strains of virus could be transferred from rat to rat and from rat to white mouse in the Jungeblut-Sanders series of experiments. The successful strain is known as "SK New Haven." Why it should "take" where others fail is not clear. At any rate this confirmation, of Dr. Armstrong's work justifies the conclusión that another landmark in the history of poliomyelitis has been erected. Out of this work flows the fact that the way may have been opened io find out on a large scale how the virus spreads in epidemics.
In the course of their experiments Drs. Jungeblur and Sanders succeeded in growing the SK strain in tissue culture. This is important because it becomes possible to draw on a standard supply in carrying on studies which will show what tissues are especially good soil for the virus. Moreover, chemists will be better able to throw light on the structure of the virus. Lastly, there is the possibility that by ssu transfers of SK from monkey to mouse and tissue culture) with no loss of imme power, a serum may yet be developed will protect human beings.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.