338 abstracts: bacteriology 



ate vicinity of the residences of poliomyelitis patients in Buffalo, N. Y. 

 These flies were then shipped to the Hygienic Laboratory and there 

 allowed to feed upon fresh monkeys. 



Contrary to what might have been expected from the results of our 

 first experiment, we have been unable to transmit the infection thru 

 Stomoxys in a single one of our later experiments. Up to this time we 

 have found no satisfactory explanation for this discrepancy in results. 

 The flies used in our later experiments have been generally as numerous 

 and as active and have fed as freely as those used in our first experiment. 

 In some of our later experiments the inoculated monkeys have been 

 exposed as promptly after inoculation, that is, after only two hours; 

 and, so far as we are able to see, all the conditions of our first experiment 

 have been duplicated. 



The question has occurred to us whether the season of the year has 

 any peculiar influence upon the transmission of poliomyelitis thru the 

 Stomoxys. Our own first experiment, as well as those of Rosenau and 

 Brues, was carried out in the early autumn, during the season when 

 poliomyelitis is commonly quite prevalent in nature. Our later experi- 

 ments, in the late autumn and winter months, were carried out during 

 a season when this disease is quite rare in nature; but in order to simu- 

 late summer conditions a temperature of 75° to 85° F. was maintained 

 in the room where these experiments were carried out. Altho there is 

 no apparent reason why the season alone, regardless of the temperature 

 maintained, should have exerted any special influence upon the outcome 

 of our experiments, it appears to us worth while to repeat the experi- 

 ments during the summer and autumn months. 



In the meantime, it is impossible to estimate accurately the impor- 

 tance which Stomoxys may play in the transmission of poliomyelitis. 

 That it is an important natural factor appears to us doubtful, not only 

 because of our own negative results but also because recent experiments 

 have afforded additional evidence of the direct transmissibility of polio- 

 myelitis and because epidemiological studies appear to us to indicate that 

 the disease is probably transmitted largely through passive human virus 

 carriers. 



Nevertheless, our negative results need not be taken as conclusive. 

 The demonstration of the infectiousness of the nasal and buccal secre- 

 tions of poliomyelitis patients was made only after a considerable number 

 of experiments had been performed with entirely negative results. The 

 same is true of several other recently established facts in experimental 

 poliomyelitis. J. F. A. and W. H. F. 



