Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 158, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1911 — GERM IS DISCOVERED [ARTICLE]

GERM IS DISCOVERED

Micro-Organism Causing Infantile Paralysis Found. Dr. Samuel Dixon, Secretary of Pennsylvania Board of Health, Makes Remarkable Find—Hope of Final Cure Seen. Topeka, Kan. —Dr. S. J. Crumbine, secretary of the Kansas Board of health, has received a letter from Dr. Samuel Dixon, secretary of the Pennsylvania board of health, explaining in detail what is believed to be the discovery of v the micro-organism which causes infantile paralysis. Dr. Nixon does not definitely assert that he has found the germ, but he has found an organism in the blood of persons and animals which are afflicted with the disease and the organism does not appear in the blood of normal persons or animals and it is not dercribed in any of the treatises of germs. Infantile paralysis has been epidemic in parts of Kansas for two years. Last year there was 189 cases and forty-seven deaths reported from this disease and the year before there were eighty cases and eighteen deaths. Scientists are working hard to isolate the germ which causes the disease and to work out a treatment to prevent or cure it Thus far no cure has been discovered and the germ has not been entirely isolated. The discovery of Dr. Dixon is a great advance and it may lead to the discovery of the cause and a treatment ftp* the disease. Dr. Crumbine and the physicians connected with the state board of health and the university medical school are watching with great interest the tests being made by Dr. Dixon. In his letter Dr. Dixon says: “In examining the blood from acute cases of poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) in human beings and also in monkeys, in which the disease was produced experimentally, an organism was found, different in morphologic character from any heretofore described, which may or may not, on further investigation, prove to be the etiological factor in the causation of the disease? Blood smears being fixed in methyl-alcohol for one minute and stained with carbol-thloln, the organism appears as a faintly stained blue rod, with regular cell wall about ten microns long and about eight-tenths of a micron in width, curved at an angle of 60 to 75 degrees at one end, occasionally at both ends. At times the curved end is bulbous. Some of the organisms apear to have a very finely granular protoplasm when the highest amplification Is employed.” Dr. Dixon then describes the microscopes which gave the best re-

suits in the examination. Continuing, he saysT “The bloods examined were from ten different cases of acute poliomyelitis in children and were taken during the epidemic last summer, and from thirteen cases of the disease in the acute stage, which had been produced experimentally in as many monkeys. "Blood smears from three normal human beings were carefully examined and, although the search for these organisms was diligently made, none was found. Smears were made from the blood of thirteen normal monkeys with negative results. After inoculation with the virus these same monkeys give positive results. “Smears from the cords and brains of paralyzed monkeys and from one human case were examined, but none of the organisms was found. Defibrinated blood, three weeks to two months old, from two paralyzed monkeys, increased numbers. Cultures made from the blood of a paralyzed monkey in various forms, examined after being inoculated three weeks, showed the presence of the organism in increased numbers. Success in isolating the organisms has not attended our efforts as yet”