INFANTILE PARALYSIS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 76, 22 December 1924, Page 10

INFANTILE PARALYSIS

CRUSADE AGAINST RATS SUGGESTED. Sir, —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 auhorities were watching the disease with special care, hut they remained very much in the dark regarding its distributino. I wrote to the Auckland papers pointing out that Dr. Mark Richardson, a distinguished Boston physician, in q 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, it 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 amount of money, were very definite in this regard, and I think in view of the fact that rats are the sole, if not the only cause, of infection, then it behoves every parent in New Zealand to insist that the rate crusade should not be spasmodic but continuous. I commend this to your paper and trust that you will give it wide publicity on account of its great importance to the infant life of the Dominion. —I am, H. P.. COOK, Auckland. December 12.