Abstract
Muckenfuss, Armstrong, and McCordock 1 , 2 and Webster and File 3 have reported that the encephalitis epidemic in St. Louis during the summer and autumn of 1933 is communicable, by inoculation, to monkeys and mice. In addition, Webster and Fite 3 reported that the encephalitis prevailing in Kansas City at the same time is likewise communicable to mice; that the infectious agent from the St. Louis and Kansas City cases is filterable, is readily transmissible to mice, is highly virulent when instilled into the nasal passages of mice, and is neutralized by the serum of encephalitis convalescents from the 1933 epidemic.
We have continued our studies of the effect on the encephalitis virus of various sera derived from cases of encephalitis and from immunized monkeys, and will report the result of these tests in the present paper.
Monkeys injected with the virus develop in their sera protective properties similar to those in the sera of convalescent St. Louis and Kansas City encephalitis cases. Again, serum from a monkey injected with one strain of virus from a St. Louis case protects not only against that strain of virus but against 2 other strains from St. Louis and 1 from Kansas City. Finally, the monkey serum prepared with our St. Louis strain of virus protects against 2 strains of the Muckenfuss, Armstrong, McCordock virus.∗
Sera from one monkey immunized with poliomyelitis virus and one monkey convalescent from experimental poliomyelitis! did not protect against the encephalitis virus. Serum from a patient with herpes likewise showed no protective properties.†
Sera from 34 cases in the encephalitis ward in the St. Louis City Isolation Hospital, August to October, 1933, have been tested.§ Of these, 30 were definitely diagnosed encephalitis and 4 questionable encephalitis complicated by schizophrenia, hysteria, hypertension, and malaria, respectively.
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