56 
Scientific Proceedings (42). 
receiving the serum of a suspected abortive case of poliomyelitis, 
indicating presumably a certain degree of germicidal power even 
in normal human serum. 
To compare this germicidal property of normal serum with 
that shown by the sera from the six suspected abortive and two 
paralytic cases in series I, we inoculated a third series of monkeys. 
In this series we tested the three normal sera which had shown 
neutralizing properties in series 2 using a 5 per cent, emulsion of 
virus, thus repeating exactly the conditions of series 1. All three 
monkeys developed typical poliomyelitis in 10 to 14 days. 
The sera of six out of nine (66.7 per cent.) suspected abortive 
cases of poliomyelitis have shown, when tested against the virus 
of poliomyelitis, a germicidal property greater than that shown 
by any one of six normal sera similarly tested. We interpret this 
as establishing, to a reasonable certainty, the diagnosis of polio- 
myelitis in these six cases, and strongly confirming the same diag- 
nosis in a larger group of clinically similar cases observed in con- 
nection with the above. 
Attention is called to the epidemiologic and prophylactic 
importance of establishing, by close study of such cases, some 
clinical criteria for their better recognition. 
32 (557) 
Pure cultures of parasitic amebas on brain-streaked agar. 
By ANNA W. WILLIAMS. 
[From the Research Laboratory, Department of Health, City of New 
York.] 
This work was begun with the attempt to obtain cultures 
of bacteria-free amebas in crushed rabies brains, the idea being 
either that the amebas might take up the rabies organisms as 
food or that they might free the rabies organisms from their host 
cells and thus bring about, in some way, a culture of the latter, 
as Clegg reports having done with the B. leprae. 
Four cultures of amebas were selected for a first trial, 3, pre- 
sumably parasitic (type, Entameba coli), the fourth, a saprophyte 
(Ameba Umax). Of these four, only one, a culture from a case of 
