THE RAT AND POLIOMYELITIS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Abstract

The central nervous organs and other viscera of six rats, collected in a district in Greater New York in which many cases of epidemic poliomyelitis occurred, have been proved incapable of inciting, on inoculation, experimental poliomyelitis in Macacus rhesus monkeys. The virus of poliomyelitis injected into the brain of white rats does not survive there as long as 4 days in a form or in amounts sufficient to cause infection when inoculated intracerebrally into monkeys. The failure of the virus injected into the brain of rats to incite infection in monkeys is not due to the quantity introduced, since at the expiration of 1½ hours after the injection, the excised inoculation site when injected into the monkey caused typical experimental poliomyelitis. It does not appear probable, therefore, that the rat acts in nature as the reservoir of the virus of poliomyelitis.