Abstract
Rabbits inoculated upon the cornea of the right eye with our virus of Herpes febrilis show constantly on about the fourth or fifth day a turning of the head toward the right side; during the succeeding days the neck is twisted strongly toward the right and held rigidly in that position. This picture was described by Doerr and Schnabel and later by Levaditi and was attributed by Doerr and Schnabel to an encephalitis, the virus probably passing from the cornea to the brain by way of the blood stream. Levaditi, on the other hand, claimed to have proved that the virus passed from the cornea along the optic nerve to the brain. Our observations make it evident to us that this symptom is due to a lesion on the right side of the pons and medulla along the distribution of sensory fibers of the fifth cranial nerve, which involves the roots of the spinal accessory nerve supplying muscles of the neck on the same side, and that this lesion is produced by the virus of herpes entering the brain from the cornea by way of the sensory portion of the fifth cranial nerve.
In such a lesion, cells of glial and ganglion types are found to contain intra-nuclear inclusion-bodies similar to those described by Lipschütz in the cornea of rabbits inoculated with virus of herpes febrilis, and which we regard as pathognomonic of herpetic lesions in general.
The following additional experiments may be cited as confirming the passage of this virus along sensory nerves:
(1). A rabbit inoculated into the skin of the right hind leg developed on the 10th day impairment in the use of this leg, progressing during the next few days to practically complete disability of this extremity. On the 11th day impairment in function of the left leg followed. At autopsy the lumbar region of the cord showed gross hemorrhages limited to the right dorsal surface of the lumbar portion of the cord along the line of entrance of dorsal root fibers
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.