180 INFECTIONS OF THE DIGESTIVE TRACT 



system. Dopter * has shown that the toxin prepared from 

 the Shiga bacilli may cause paralysis in rabbits and that 

 this paralysis is usually referable to acute lesions in the 

 gray axis of the spinal cord or ponto-bulbar region. As 

 the result of the action of a similar poison Flexner saw 

 small haemorrhages in the brain and softening in the gray 

 substance of the spinal cord with or without haemorrhage. 

 Rabbits are unequally susceptible to this nervous poison 

 or neurotoxin, and only a small proportion of them de- 

 velop nervous lesions after treatment with the poison, 

 whether this be autolyzed or not. The fact that such 

 lesions may be sometimes induced and perhaps regu- 

 larly under suitable experimental conditions has a pos- 

 sible bearing of great importance for human pathology. 

 It has long been clear to clinicians that young children 

 are susceptible to paralyses referable generally to lesions 

 in the gray substance of the spinal cord and that these 

 paralyses are apt to come on at a time of disordered intes- 

 tinal digestion; often indeed at the time of teething, to 

 which process the paralysis has often been somewhat 

 vaguely referred. As we have only learned in recent 

 years to see a specific bacillary dysentery in many cases 

 of slight intestinal disorder in children, it is likely that 

 many instances of infantile spinal paralysis have been as- 

 sociated with a true dysenteric infection. Of the numer- 

 ous cases of dysentery that occur yearly in children, only 

 a relatively small number are attended with paralyses, 

 but in view of the experimental data now in our posses- 



1 "Effets exp Sriment aux de la toxine dysent6rique sur le 

 systeme nerveux," Ann. de I'Inst. Pasteur, xix, p. 353, 1905. 



