ACUTE ANTERIOR POLIOMYELITIS 667 



afflicted have passed beyond the susceptible age by the time of the sec- 

 ond epidemic. As a matter of fact, however, these workers have not 

 succeeded in reinfecting monkeys that had recovered. 



In chickens a disease has been observed similar in many ways to 

 poliomyelitis, but further study has shown this to be a polyneuritis. 



Of other animals besides monkeys, rabbits only have been success- 

 fully inoculated with this disease. Transmission to these animals was 

 first reported by Kraus and Meinicke a and later by Lentz and Hunte- 

 miiller. 2 Marks 3 has studied the disease in rabbits thoroughly, and 

 concludes that there is no doubt that the virus can be cultivated 

 through a limited number of generations in rabbits. He was able to 

 transmit to monkeys from rabbit material. The disease, however, does 

 not resemble that of man or monkeys clinically and no definite lesions 

 of the central nervous system are present. The rabbits seem perfectly 

 well for six or seven days, when rapid weakness and death in con- 

 vulsions occur. 



Animals which have been unsuccessfully injected, even with living 

 virus, do not develop immunity. However, animals that have been 

 successfully inoculated and recovered are, like human beings, thereafter 

 immune. Levaditi and Landsteiner, Koemer and Joseph, and Flexner 

 and Lewis have shown that the serum of recovered monkeys will pro- 

 tect normal animals from fatal doses of the virus. That the same pro- 

 tective power for monkeys has been shown in the serum of human 

 recovered cases, is shown by the same authors and by Anderson, and 

 Frost, consequently the intraspinous injection of the serum of recently 

 recovered children into patients in high stages of the disease has re- 

 cently been advocated and is thought well of by a number of observers. 

 This work, however, has not reached completion and final judgment 

 must be withheld. 



1 Kraus und Meinicke, Deut. med. Woch., xxxv, 1909. 



2 Lentz und Huntemuller, Zeitschr. f. Hyg., Ixvi, 1910, 



3 Marks, Jour, of Exp. Med., xiv, 1911. 



