ATTEMPTS TO TRANSMIT POLIOMYELITIS BY MEANS OF THE STABLE-FLY (STOMOXYS CALCITRANS)

In a discussion before the Fifteenth International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, Sept. 26, 1912, Rosenau¹ reported that he had been able to transmit a disease in all essential respects like poliomyelitis, through the agency of the biting stable-fly, from monkeys purposely infected with poliomyelitis to six out of twelve well monkeys used in his experiment. At the time of this announcement parts of California were passing through a severe epidemic of poliomyelitis,² and the problem of preventing the spread of the disease was of especial concern to the State Board of Health. If the stable-fly was the chief disseminator of poliomyelitis, very important steps were not being taken, while unnecessary preventive measures, some of them very burdensome, were being enforced. The State Board of Health at once laid plans for an investigation to determine the extent to which it should consider the stable-fly in measures for preventing