CAUSE AND TREATMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18929, 29 January 1925, Page 10

CAUSE AND TREATMENT.

ORGANISM RESPONSIBLE. EXPERIMENTS WITH SERUM. Tho suggestion in a letter published yesterday that white lead poisoning might have some bearing upon the infantile paralysis outbreak, was not supported by the medical officer of health, Dr. T. J. Hughes. "Lead poisoning affects only certain muscles of the arms and. hands," he said, "whereas infantile paralysis is caused by a living organism which attacks part of the, brain and spinal cord, and may give rise to either temporary or permanent paralysis of any muscle or group of muscles throughout the body. Infantile paralysis is infectious, but* lead poisoning is not. In cases of the former, a specific virus has been obtained which will give the disease to animals, whereas lead palsy, caused by lead poisoning, is not transmitted from one person to another." Dr. Hughes stated that wherever possible, all. cases were being sent to the public hospitals, where isolation could be more effective. With regard to treatment, there was practically nothing to do but to put the patient to bed and place the affected limb in splints. No serum treatment had as yet been generally adopted. A certain measure of success had been achieved in America in experimental treatment of monkeys. Use of the inoculation method had been made in a few instances in France, where the blood serum derived from persons who bad recovered from the disease had been injected into tho spinal membrane of persons who had just become paralysed. The results were said to be promising, but the quantity of human serum was very limited, and the treatment had not been widely adopted. It is understood that special investigations along these lines are now being made by Dr. Gilmore, the bacteriologist at Auckland. Hospital, but definite results have not yet been achieved.