Evening star., 1938-01-29

In 1863 Andreas Bull, a country doctor
in Norway, found himself confronted
with strange epidemic.
Children would come in overheated
from play with slight fevers and tearing
pains in their joints and backs When
he touched them around the spines they
would scream in agony. He had four
teen such cases in a few days. There
was very little the good doctor could do.
Helplessly he watched five of his patients
die. The others. after q week or more
of suffering, seemed to get better sponta-
neously but several of them were crippled
for life.
DR.. Bull thought 1t was some queer
form Of spinal meningitis. Other physi
clans may have had the same experience
before, made the same bad diagnosis,
and said nothing more about it. This
man wrote description of the cases for
a medical journal and by doing 50
assured himself of a place in medical
history. He became the discOverer of
epidemic poliomyelitis.
With one possible exception in the
United States, his was the first record
Of the appearance in epidemic form Of a
malady which previously had been 4
rare medical curiosity Of which only
individual cases previously had been
reported. Bull himself apparently never
had heard Of the disease.
Was this isolated epilemic in northern
Europe polio's first mass attack? 1t
seems unlikely, and yet it is possible. 1t
was not until more than ten years later
that another epidemic was reported, this
time in Sweden. Since then there have
been more than 100 epidemics officially
recognized, nearly all of them in North
ern Europe, the United States and
Canada. eliminating in the great Amer
lean one of 1916 with more than 10000
cases.
The United States has had IS such
outbreaks, most Of them local in char
acter since the first officially recognized
which occurred in 1893 around Boston.
For the Is years between 1880 and 1905
there were 400 cases, both epidemic and
individual, reported in this country. For
the five years 1905 to 1909 inclusive there
were $500 cases. During the next five
years there were 18, 1900. In the next two
mark of the malady to date, there were
$1,000. Ever since the incidence of the
disease 1t has fluctuated from year to
yCdls OuL Will IO lIlOlCdClOu GIldG ally
pronounced ebb is in progress.
Very likely some of this increase is
only apparent, due to more public atten-
ton and compulsory reporting. But a
very large part it is probable, was actual.
And therein lies the real menace of
polio. Even in epidemics not many per-
sons are hit. There is apparently high
degree Of resistance to it. Considered
in terms of quantity alone it makes
hardly ripple in the sickness and death
curves Of the nation.
But 1t cannot be trusted to stay this
way. There is always the possibility that
the next outbreak will eclipse those that
have gone before as the $1,000 cases In
1913 eclipsed the little epidemic reported
by DIR. Bull in Norway. II polio actually
changed, as some physicians believe it
did, from q sporadic to an epidemic
disease through some change in the
nature of the organism itself there is
nothing to prevent an even greater
change in the same direction, The same
is true, Of course. Of encephalitis leth-
argica, also an attack on nervous tissue
by filterable virus, which appeared in
the world about the same time. It may
be true Of the new choriomeningitis,
first discovered two years ago by physi-
clans Of the U. s. Public Health Service,
which seems relatively mild at present
In the center Of the worst epidemics
only about one person in five hundred
has the disease and only one child out
Of about seventy children under five
years Of age. But this Is where, appar-
emily. some immunity has been built up