Rosenow's Antipoliomyelitic Serum. 43 



133 (i3«) 



Therapeutic experiments with Rosenow's antipoliomyelitic serum. 



By Harold L. Amoss and Frederick Eberson. 



[From the Laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Re- 

 search, New York.] 



Opinions of bacteriologists on the etiology of poliomyelitis 

 divide them into two well-defined camps. One group affirms that 

 the streptococci bear a causal relationship to poliomyelitis and 

 are biologically akin to the globoid bodies of Flexner and Noguchi; 

 the other group denies that they are of essential etiologic import- 

 ance and regards them as secondary invaders. The question is 

 important because of its relation to the problems of prevention 

 and treatment of the disease. 



Because of the failure to produce in large animals a serum 

 possessing therapeutic properties for the treatment of polio- 

 myelitis, serum derived from recovered cases has been used. A 

 far greater measure of success has recently been claimed in treat- 

 ment of human cases by the use of serum produced in animals 

 such as the horse by the repeated intravenous injections of strepto- 

 cocci. Obviously the treatment of a long series of cases from 

 several epidemics is necessary before any definite conclusion can 

 be reached concerning the efficiency of a specific serum. In the 

 present case, however, we believe that the question may be more 

 expeditiously answered by the experimental method. 



An injection of minute amounts of active poliomyelitic virus 

 intracerebrally into the monkey invariably results in paralysis 

 and generally in death of the animal, but intravenous injections 

 of much larger amounts of the same virus produce no symptoms. 

 If, however, at the time of the intravenous injection or a few 

 hours before, the meninges and choroid plexus are inflamed by 

 the introduction of small amounts of sterile monkey, horse or 

 human serum, or even sterile isotonic solutions of electrolytes, 

 the virus passes from the blood into the nervous tissues and 

 induces characteristic changes which lead to paralysis and death. 

 Flexner and Amoss have shown that repeated injections of immune 



