View report page

153
[1913
abdominal muscles are not infrequently involved. "In short," as Romer puts
it, "any and every muscle may be affected," but the great characteritsic of
the disease is motor paralysis, that is of the muscles of movement.
These various paralyses lead to most abnormal twistings and contractions
of the limbs and body, so that they are often painful to look at. Unfortunately
these abnormalities are mostly frequent and permanent, and, therefore,
cripple the patients for life.
Etiology or Causation.—The cause of the disease is undoubtedly some
living virus, but whatever it may be, it is clear from the experiments of Romer
that hitherto it has been impossible to isolate microbes which could be easily
stained and cultivated, and which could be said to be the active agents.
The researches of Wickham led to the same result; while those of Landsteiner,
and Krause and Meincke, throughout an epidemic in Westphalia,
failed to indicate bacteria which could be regarded as playing a part in the
etiology of the disease.
Experiments prove that if the virus be a bacterium, then it is so minute
as to pass through Berkefeld, Chamberland and Puckall filters, which are
known to keep back ordinary bacteria. Ultra-microscopy does not elucidate
the matter, although it seems to have detected very small, oval, slightly
illuminated, motionless bodies, which, however, were not constant enough to
enable Romer, with Joseph and Siebert, to aver positively that they were
connected with the disease, or that they were the causative agent.
It would be of interest to give an account of the various experiments on
monkeys and rabbits that were made in search of the virus for this disease,
but this is hardly the place to do so.
At present it is sufficient to say that so far the search for the bacterium
of poliomyelitis has had negative results, but this is not to say that the disease
is not caused by one. Romer, however, asserts that his own researches have
convinced him that poliomyelitis was not caused by bacteria, but that the
virus, like that of rabies, showed a selective preference for the cerebral
nervous system, and, also, as proved by his intracerebral injection of virus
into monkeys, that he was able at once to produce a disease in them which
clinically and pathologically was identical with poliomyelitis in man; and
that he was also able to transmit the disease from one monkey to another, which
proved, he alleges, that the virus which caused the changes in the brain and
spinal cord was living and not merely a toxin.