THE RELATION TO THE BLOOD OF THE VIRUS OF EPIDEMIC POLIOMYELITIS

Specimens of human blood taken during the paralytic stage of poliomyelitis and post mortem have proved not to be capable of infecting Macacus monkeys. Specimens of monkey blood taken at various stages of experimental poliomyelitis have not proved as a rule to be capable of infecting monkeys. In a single instance, among ten tests, infection was secured with a specimen of blood removed at the beginning of the paralysis on the seventh day following an intracerebral inoculation. When suspensions of the spinal cord from a paralyzed monkey have been injected into the brain or simultaneously into the brain and spinal canal, the blood removed from one to forty-eight hours later failed to cause paralysis after intracerebral injection. When large volumes of active filtrate are injected into the circulation the blood remains infective for seventy-two hours at least, but may be no longer infective after ten days when the paralytic symptoms first appear. When, however, the filtrate is injected in smaller amount or when a filtrate of a less active virus is employed in large quantity, the blood either fails to convey infection or conveys it irregularly. It is only when overwhelming quantities of an active virus are injected into the blood that paralysis results. The injection of moderate doses is not followed by paralysis, although the virus may still be detected in a blood sample twenty-four hours after the injection. The existence of a mechanism capable of excluding the virus within the blood from the central nervous organs is therefore inferred. Infection is accomplished far less readily through the circulation than by means of the more direct lymphatic and nervous channels of communication with the central nervous system. Several series of feeding experiments conducted with the biting stable fly (Stomoxys calcitrans) resulted negatively.