INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 306, 26 December 1924, Page 3

INFANTILE PARALYSIS.

DEVELOPED FROM EATS. (From Our Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. Several cases of infantile paralysis have been reported in the nearby suburbs of Petone, and the homes in which the cases occurred were immediately isolated, and it is believed that the authorities have the epidemic well in hand. In connection with this matter a correspondent writing from Auckland to a local paper says: "In 1919, after the reappearance of infantile paralysis in the Wellington district was reported by the Health Department, one of your papers reported that the health authorities were watching the disease with special care, but they remained very much in the dark regarding its distribution. I wrote to the Auckland papers pointing out that Dr. Mark Richardson, a distinguished Boston physician, in a paper read by him before the Association of American Physicians, and embodied in the 'American Journal of Public Health,' stated, that the rat is the great cause, if not the only cause, of the dreadful disease called infantile paralysis. Dr. Richardson's conclusions are based upon very wide experimentation, since the terrifying New York city epidemic of 1916. The investigations of Dr. Richardson, which cost a tremendous nmount of money, were very definite in this regard, and I think in view of the fact that rats are the main, if not the only cause of infection, then it behoves every parent in New Zealand to insist that the rat crusade should not be spasmodic but continuous. I commend this to your l>appr and trust that you will give it wide publicity on account of its great importance to the infant life of the Dominion." t