INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 51, 29 February 1916, Page 9

INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —As the doctors do not appear to have a tangible theory to account for tho spread of this disease, may I, as a mere lay person, put forward a theory which, although it may be scouted by some, may still be worthy of examination? I suggest that the wide distribution of this disease may have some relation to the distribution of soldiers all over the country. I do not suggest, of course, that this i 3 the actual cause of the disease, but it is evidently being disseminated by some far-reaching factor at present unknown. None of the local theories put forward by the doctors, such as heat, dust, mosquitos, sandflies, etc., will explain why the disease is also prevalent in England now during the winter. Troops are widely distributed there as well as here, and it is well known that all wars have been followed by epidemics of infectious diseases, and there is no reason to suppose that this war will be any exception in this respect. I merely suggest that the germ may develop in camps, and be unwittingly distributed by "carriers" all over the country. It docs not follow that the "carriers" may be actual sufferers themselves. Towards the end of the Boer war there was an epidemic of dysentery in Rotorua, evidently, brpught there by returned soldiers. I was one of the-eufrerore, so I happen to know. After the FrancoPrussian war a great epidemic of smallpox swept off thousands in England, France and Germany, and so on.—l am, etc., " W.S.