Production of Experimental Poliomyelitis from Untreated Stools. ∗

Abstract

It is now a well established fact that poliomyelitis virus may be present in considerable quantities in the stools of patients suffering from either paralytic or abortive attacks of the disease. These findings have been summarized by Trask, Vignec and Paul 1 who recently described a method for treating human stools in order to render them suitable for intraperitoneal inoculation into monkeys. Such procedures unfortunately involve the use of bactericidal substances of which the effect upon poliomyelitis virus is unknown. It is thus desirable to obtain a method of utilizing the material from stools without the intervention of measures which may cause attenuation or other change in virus. Such a method has been found in the simple intranasal inoculation of monkeys with an untreated stool suspension. On September 15, 1938, a stool specimen was obtained from a 3–year-old quadriplegic child through the courtesy of Dr. Harold Hobart of the Children's Hospital, Washington, D. C. The stool was collected on the third day after the onset of paralysis. At the time the child was still febrile. The specimen was immediately made up into a thick suspension with distilled water and the supernatant fluid was placed in the ice box. Two Rhesus monkeys were inoculated intranasally with this fluid on 3 successive days, each animal receiving a total of 3 cc per nostril. Following the introduction of the material the nasal passages were rubbed gently with a pipe cleaner.

On the fourteenth and eighteenth days respectively the animals developed typical but not extensive paralyses. They were killed and portions of the cord were removed for histological study and rein-oculation. Typical poliomyelitic lesions were found in the grey matter of each spinal cord. Cultures of a suspension of each cord on blood agar and in blood broth were negative except for a B. subtilis contamination in one sample.