Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/414

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��Popular Science Monthly

���Keeping Clean Is Equivalent to Keeping Cool and the Street Gamins Thorouchly Approve of the Idea of Frequent Baths

Health Service, states that in Cincinnati lie saw paralyzed chickens and ducks around hcimes in whii h were infanlile paralysis cases, hut again there was no way of connecting one tyjie of victim wilh the other.

At present the tendency is to attribute the disease to dust germs. When infec- ted wilh particles of dust found in the rooms of paralysis victims monkeys

��Parks, Playgrounds and Re- creation Piers Where Children Congregate Are Closed and Families of Children Are Segregated as Much as Possible in Their Own Districts

soon die. The Rockefeller Institute is now carrA'ing on elaborate experiments along this line, and there is some hope that the niyster>' may yet be solved. Fifty thousand dollars in one cash prize awaits the man who solves it.

Dr. Flexner, who has succeeded in isolating the organism of infantile par- alysis, says it is an infectious and comnumicable disease which is caused by the invasion of the central nervous organs — the si-)inal cord and brain — of a minute, filterable micro-organism which has now been secured in artificial culture and as such is distinctly visible under the higher powers of the microscope.

"The virus of infantile paralysis," says he, "exists constantly in the central ner\'ous organs and upon the nnicous membrane of the nose and throat and of the intestines in persons suffering from the disease; it occurs less fretiuent- ly in the other internal organs, and it has not been detected in the gcner;iJ circulating blood of patients."

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