Acute poliomyelitis (Heine-Medins disease) / translated by W.J.M.A. Maloney.
- Wickman, Ivan.
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Acute poliomyelitis (Heine-Medins disease) / translated by W.J.M.A. Maloney. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)
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![EPIDEMIOLOGY *<-»* and Emerson). More than 200 cases were reported from Ne- braska in 1909. It was long recognized that acute poliomyelitis prevailed mostly during summer and early autumn. This seasonal incidence was maintained, as a rule, in the recent epidemics. Not less that] 86 per cent, of the cases in the Swedish epidemic of 1905 occurred between July and October. The maximum number, 35 per cent, of the total cases, developed in August. Leegaard observed a similar incidence in the Norwegian epidemic. But the maximum of the 1907 epidemic in New York occurred in September; and in September most cases appeared in the Massachusetts epidemic described by Lovett. During the epidemic in Hesse-Nassau (Ed. Miiller) the morbidity was markedly less in July, August and Sep- tember than in October and November. In these last two months over 75 per cent, of the total cases occurred. Miiller explains that'the disease probably began in the'adjacent region of West- phalia, reached its height there in September and October, and gradually invaded Hesse-Nassau till it assumed epidemic propor- tions. The apex of an epidemic, therefore, occurs, as a rule, in summer and early autumn; but in certain districts it has occurred in winter. In three adjacent and clearly connected outbreaks, the 18 cases of the first appeared between June and October ; the 27, comprising the second, which occurred to the west of the first,, from July to December; and the 72 cases of the third, which ap- peared in a contiguous but still more westerly district, developed between the end of September and the following February, and had their maximum during November and December (Wickman). An epidemic which prevailed throughout the winter in North Sweden has just been reported to the board of health. From October till the following September, 69 cases were observed in a relatively small area, by the only physician of the district. They occurred as follows: October to December, 13 cases; January to March, 25; April to June, 28; and July to September, 3 cases. The apex of this epidemic occurred, therefore, in April and May. Although Heine-Medin's disease may be deemed a summer malady, it may not only Occur, it may be even epidemic in winter. Its winter occurrence is, as I shall later discuss, not without impor- tance from the point of view of the mode of spread of the disease. Wickman states that the period of incubation is one to four](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21273856_0113.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
