POSITIVE CASES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 28, 3 February 1937, Page 12

POSITIVE CASES

INFANTILE PARALYSIS

(By Telegraph.—Proas Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, February 2,

"It is open to a good deal of doubt whether these cases which have been called positive really are positive when there is no actual paralysis present," said Dr. A. D. Nelson, medical superintendent of Christchurch Public Hospital, tonight, when he suggested that many of the cases in hospitals throughout the South Island, as infantile paralysis were not really cases of that disease. "We have four cases in hospital here who have been given out to the world as positive cases. I doubt if they are," he said. "Some people say they can diagnose a case definitely in its pre-paralytic stage. lam quite honest when I say I cannot. I don't think a case can be certainly diagnosed in that stage, and I think every doctor who is honest will tell you the same.

"When a suspected case is admitted we take some of the cerebral fluid and make a cell count. If there is a very big increase in the count we become suspicious, but it is still open to much doubt until actual paralysis develops. In the pre-paralytic stage a case can be either very serious or nothing at all. It is open to question when a case is described as positive in the absence of paralysis," he concluded.

This statement by Dr. Nelson 'was confirmed later by Dr. J. F. Landreth, who was appointed in the early stages of the epidemic as official specialist in the disease for Canterbury. "The point about the whole thing is that there is some doubt," •he said. "The public health authorities have taken it that all people with high cell counts are positive cases, but it must be admitted that there is quite a large degree of doubt about it all the same."