632 FILTERABLE VIRUSES-RICKETTSIA 
the amount of virus circulating in the blood stream is usually very 
small, thus suggesting the improbability of insect transmission except 
in unusual instances. 
An important advance in the study of the etiology of epidemic 
poliomyelitis was that of Flexner and Noguchi.^ Using the technique 
of Noguchi^ for the cultivation of Treponemata (unheated ascitic 
fluid and fragments of sterile rabbit tissue under strictly anaerobic 
conditions) they obtained minute, slowly-growing colonies composed 
of "globular and globoid" bodies occurring singly, in pairs, masses, 
and in short chains. The elements measure from 0.15 to 0.3 micron 
in diameter. Bizarre forms are prone to appear in older cultures. 
The elements stain feebly with the Giemsa stain and by Gram's 
method— they stain variably with the latter. The globoid bodies have 
also been demonstrated in tissues by a modified Giemsa technique. 
The first cultivations upon artificial media are difficult to obtain, but 
subcultures grow more readily. No action was observed on the 
ordinary sugars and alcohols. Growth appears to take the place in 
litmus milk reenforced with bits of sterile tissue, but no visible change 
in the medium can be detected. Cultivations can be readily made from 
Berkefeld filtrates of ascitic fluid growths, thus showing that the 
organisms, or at least some of them, are filterable. Cultures of the 
organisms were shown to cause the typical disease with characteristic 
lesions in monkeys. 
Flexner, Xoguchi and Amoss^ have shown that cultures containing 
the globoid bodies may retain their virulence for monkeys at least a 
year, and Flexner, Clark and Amoss^ have shown that the virus retains 
its pathogenicity in 50 per cent glycerin for eleven months; in 0.5 
phenol for five days, and frozen at —2° to —4° C. for at least six 
weeks. Amoss* has improved the technique for cultivating these 
bodies from cases of epidemic poliomyelitis. 
Pieces of brain from infected animals are incubated in the kidney- 
ascitic fluid of Noguchi for about two weeks, then crushed carefully 
and reincubated for three days longer. The globoid bodies appear 
to multiply in the brain tissue and their subsequent recognition and 
cultivation is rendered more certain. Stained sections of such brain 
tissues show increased numbers of these peculiar bodies, which may be 
either the virus itself, or, possibly, artefacts accompanying the virus. 
Whatever the nature of these globoid bodies may subsequently prove 
to be, the significance of the experiments of Xoguchi is unchallenged. 
Zingher*^ has injected serum, both from immune and normal indi- 
viduals into the spinal canal of cases of poliomyelitis during the febrile 
stage, and has shown that the serum causes a distinct cellular reaction, 
which is mostly poly nuclear in type. This is of benefit to the patient 
by promoting phagocytosis. 
1 Jour. Am. Med. Assn., 1913, 60, 362; Jour. Exp. Med., 1913, 18, 461. 
2 Jour. E.xp. Med., 1911, 14, 99; 1912, 15, 90; 16, 199, 211. 
3 Jour. Exp. Med., 1915, 21, 91. * Ibid., 1914, 19, 207. 
6 Ibid., 1914, 19, 212. « Jour. Am. Med. Assn., 1917, 68, 817. 
