Results of the Recent Epidemic of Poliomyelitis in New York State

The wave of poliomyelitis which swept over the United States last summer helped to clear up some obscure and disputed points in its epidemiology.From the standpoint of preventive medicine, a knowledge of the mode of contact, transmission and communicability is essential in order to control the spread of disease.The material on which this paper is based was obtained from a study of 4,186 cases reported to the New York State Department of Health from June to December, 1916.This does not include the cases occurring in the city of New York,The age incidence in the state differed somewhat from that in the city, as 55 per cent, of the cases occurred in children under 5 years of age, as com¬ pared with 90 per cent, in New York City.Poliomye¬ litis was almost entirely a disease of childhood in the city of New York, where there were only 1.7 per cent, of the cases among persons over 16 years of age.In the state, exclusive of New York City, 10 per cent of the cases were of persons over 16 years of age.This difference between the age incidence in urban and rural sections of the state seems to be borne out by the expe¬ rience of other states in the last epidemic.At the Cincinnati meeting of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Frost declared that "studies of sta¬ tistics of such epidemics as are now available show that in rural epidemics, especially those in Iowa and Minnesota, a much larger proportion of the cases have been in the higher age groups than has been the case in epidemics occurring in large cities."Dr. Frost suggests an explanation for this difference, when he says, "Certain other infectious diseases, not¬