This report deals with a spinal puncture made post mortem on a child who had died during the fourth day of illness from meningococcus meningitis. The tap was made to clear up the lingering doubt of a diagnosis of poliomyelitis. The chief interest lies in the fact that although the child had been dead twenty-eight hours and had been embalmed two hours after death, live meningococci were recovered in the spinal fluid which were later grown in culture successfully in the laboratory.
REPORT OF CASE
History
—M. T., a girl, aged 8 years, weighing 59 pounds (27 Kg.) and living on an isolated farm in Albany County, N. Y., in a family with five other children was quite well on Monday, April 8, 1929, but on the following morning she seemed drowsy and chilly. After a rather light breakfast she walked half a mile to the one-room rural school. Two