The virus of poliomyelitis affects the ceriral nervous system and paralyses the centres and nerves that contro] movement. But how docs it enter the system? It has been generally assumed that the virus enters the nose and follows the smelling nerves. But Drs. Jungcblut and Sanders and others before them have found that there are other ways of entry.
This particular phase of poliomyelitis has been the subject of much research by Drs. Howard A. Howe and David Bodian (Johns Hopkins). Papers of theirs which have been presented before the Society of Experimental Biology and the American Medical Association leave no doubt that the virus of poliomyelitis can enter by way of mouth and alimentary canal. For all one knows it may even be the commoner way.
It may be conjectured that in smelling con-laminated food people naturally invite the virus to enter by way of the nose. Drs. Howe and Bodian guarded against this possibility by using a stomach tube and cutting the olfactory tract. They got their virus from the stools of children afflicted with poliomyelitis; for they wanted something that had not been passed from one human being or animal to another. The two have definitely proved that poliomyelitis does gain an entrance through the mouth and stomach. This conviction is strengthened by a human case on which Drs. Howe and Bodian reported. The brain of this victim showed that the case was one of "ascending paralysis," and that the virus had not entered by way of the nose. It is significant, too, that children who have had their tonsils removed seem to Joe especially susceptible to poliomyelitis, whi means that a guardian of the alimentary tract is gone.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.