Reports and papers on epidemic poliomyelitis.

Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Reports and papers on epidemic poliomyelitis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    influenza whereas they are rare in poliomyelitis. Further, the prevalence of influenza is greater in winter and of poliomyelitis in summer. Tubercular meningitis has generally a more gradual onset than poliomyelitis; the headache is less violent and the disease runs a more regular course. Nearly if not all the cases end fatally. In acute meningitis there is generally some recognisable cause such as suppurative disease of the ear or nose, disease of bone, injury, pyaemia or other acute illness. Spinal symptoms are, more*- over, less commonly present. Part 2.—Epidemiology. Probably the first epidemic of poliomyelitis to be recorded occurred in Louisiana, though its true nature was not recognised; The following description of it is given by Colmer.4 “ While on a visit to the parish in the fall of 1841, my attention was called to a child, one year of age, slowly recovering from hemiplegia. The parents, who were people of intelligence and unquestioned veracity, stated that 8 or 10 cases of either hemiplegia or paraplegia had occurred during the preceding three or four months within a few miles of their home. Some of these had recovered completely, others were improving.” Bergenholz in 1881 recognised and described an outbreak of poliomyelitis. The first important work on the subject was, however, contributed by Medin, who described an epidemic of 43 cases in Stockholm in 1887. Since that time epidemics have been recognised and probably have occurred with increasing frequency in different parts of the world. Lovett5 gives the number of cases of polio- myelitis reported in the literature of the world as occurring in epidemics by five-yearly periods from 1880 to 1909, as follows :— Cases. Epidemics. Average No. of Cases. 1880-1884 23 2 11-5 1885-1889 93 7 13-0 1890-1894 151 4 38-0 1895-1899 345 23 15-0 1900-1904 349 9 39-0 1905-1909 8,054 25 322*0 After making allowance for the increase due to greater accuracy of diagnosis, it seems probable that there has been a definite and progressive increase in the occurrence of epidemics of this disease in recent years. Holt and Bartlett16 have collected records of 35 epidemics of poliomyelitis which occurred up till the year 1907, the chief being those which took place in Norway and Sweden in 1905 and 1906. Since then larger or smaller outbreaks have been reported in England, Germany, Holland, Austria, France, America, Canada and Australia. 21588 K
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