Abstract
Recent work on attempts to produce active immunity in monkeys with poliomyelitis virus by McKinley and Larson 1 and quite recently by Kramer, Schaeffer and Park, 2 Brodie 3 , 4 and Kolmer and Rule 5 , 6 has indicated that it is possible to produce such immunity with virus treated with sodium ricinoleate, immune serum or formalin. In addition Park and his group and Kolmer have employed such vaccines without harm in children and adults. Aycock and others have given live virus to monkeys subcutaneously without producing paralysis. Brodie 7 has demonstrated that a single sub-infective intracutaneous inoculation of active virus gives rise to an immunity which appears at or soon after the sixth day and reaches its height by the twentieth day. The immunity so produced persists for at least one year. A second injection of the antigen gives rise to considerable additional immunity. These various observations give hope that some method may be found to produce immunity against this disease.
We here report briefly a method we have been studying for producing immunity with poliomyelitis virus which involves the use of minute amounts of living and untreated virus given intracutaneously to monkeys. Such a method in order to be of practical use should be harmless and it should produce a degree of immunity sufficient to protect the animals against a subsequent paralyzing dose of poliomyelitis virus given intracerebrally. While the various methods mentioned above depend upon treatment of the virus with some substance such as formalin or a fatty acid salt it may be of practical significance to determine if live, untreated, virus in small doses (similar to vaccine virus) may be employed with efficiency and without danger.
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