Factors of Resistance in Experimental Poliomyelitis

The question of immunity in acute anterior poliomyelitis has remained a challenging problem in virus studies. Investigations conducted since the early work of Landsteiner and Popper and of Flexner and his associates have attempted to solve the difficult situation, but experimental medicine has not as yet placed in the hands of the clinician and public health official effective tools capable of preventing or specifically treating this condition. Attempts to devise methods of immunization have been too numerous to recount, but generally the procedures have not been sufficiently effective and safe in the experimental disease for proper application to man. The noncultivability of the infectious agent on lifeless mediums and the availability of only a single, expensive experimental animal have been practical deterrents, but the basic difficulties have been more recently appreciated; namely, the peculiar pathogenesis of the disease and specifically the tendency of the virus to follow neural pathways. Efforts to induce an immunity in man have been based on classic principles