Handbook of Medical EntomologyRiley, William A. (William Albert)
Science
Handbook of Medical Entomology
Riley, William A. (William Albert)
Insect pests; Insects as carriers of disease; Medical parasitology
The results of these experiments gained much publicity and in spite of
the conservative manner in which they had been announced, it was widely
proclaimed that infantile paralysis was conveyed in nature by the
stable-fly and by it alone.
Serious doubt was cast on this theory by the results of further
experiments by Anderson and Frost, reported in May of 1913. Contrary to
the expectations justified by their first experience, the results of all
the later, and more extended, experiments were wholly negative. Not once
were these investigators again able to transmit the infection of
poliomyelitis through _Stomoxys_. They concluded that it was extremely
doubtful that the insect was an important factor in the natural
transmission of the disease, not only because of their series of
negative results, "but also because recent experiments have afforded
additional evidence of the direct transmissibility or contagiousness of
poliomyelitis, and because epidemiological studies appear to us to
indicate that the disease is more likely transmitted largely through
passive human virus carriers."
Soon after this, Kling and Levaditi (1913) published their detailed
studies on acute anterior poliomyelitis. They considered that the
experiments of Flexner and Clark (and Howard and Clark), who fed
house-flies on emulsion of infected spinal cord, were under conditions
so different from what could occur in nature that one could not draw
precise conclusions from them regarding the epidemiology of the disease.
They cited the experiments of Josefson (1912), as being under more
reasonable conditions. He sought to determine whether the inoculation of
monkeys with flies caught in the wards of the Hospital for Contagious
Diseases at Stockholm, where they had been in contact with cases of
poliomyelitis, would produce the disease. The results were completely
negative.
Kling and Lavaditi made four attempts of this kind. The flies were
collected in places where poliomyelitics had dwelt, three, four and
twenty-four after the beginning of the disease in the family and one,
three, and fifteen days after the patient had left the house. These
insects were for the greater part living and had certainly been in
contact with the infected person. In addition, flies were used which had
been caught in the wards of the Hospital for Contagious Diseases at
Söderkoping, when numbers of poliomyelitics were confined there.
Finally, to make the conditions as favorable as possible, the emulsions
prepared from these flies were injected without previous filtering,
since filtration often causes a weakening of the virus. In spite of
these precautions, all their results were negative, none of the
inoculated animals having contracted poliomyelitis. They also
experimented with bedbugs which had fed upon infected patients at
various stages of the disease, but the results in these cases also were
wholly negative.
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