Does antipoliomyelitis serum improve recovery or prevent death in patients with poliomyelitis?
Historical review of antipoliomyelitis serum use shows mixed and generally poor outcomes when administered after clinical symptoms or paralysis have developed.
It is now definitely decided that poliomyelitis is due to a true filtrable virus. This is of extreme importance since no disease due to a filtrable virus is known that can be benefited by an antiserum after clinical symptoms have developed. As one reads of the attempts made to cure the disease, one notes that at first the serum was advocated, not only in recently paralyzed persons but in those in whom the paralysis had existed for some days. Thus in France, Netter, in 1915, treated intraspinally thirty-two persons after paralysis had developed and was enthusiastic about the results. Eight of the thirty-two patients died. They had the bulbar type of paralysis. In America, Zingher, in 1916, treated eighty-eight patients at the Willard Parker Hospital. Thirty-eight of these patients died. At the Minturn Hospital he treated eighteen patients who were already paralyzed. Fifteen recovered. Zingher was less enthusiastic than Netter,
William H. Park (1932) studied this question.