Pathway to Paralysis

Like an army besieged is the human body. Around it lie fortifications of epidermis. Microbic attackers which penetrate this wall are pounced on by battalions of defenders in the blood and lymph. But there is one gap opening on a shortcut to General Headquarters (the brain). To the autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences at Cambridge. Mass, last week (see p. 50) Dr. Simon Flexner, director of Manhattan's Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, reported that Institute researchers confirmed the widely accepted theory that this pathway is traveled by one of mankind's deadliest enemies--the virus of infantile paralysis.

The pathway, explained Dr. Flexner. is the one by which the sensation of smell reaches the brain. Exposed in the mucous membrane of the nose lie the hairlike end-processes of the olfactory nerve cells. Up these nerves, which are relatively isolated from the blood and lymph, the attacking virus passes direct to the brain's olfactory lobe, thence proceeds to invade more distant parts of the brain and spinal cord. The invaders, injuring motor nerve cells, produce muscular paralysis. The damage done, some of the virus returns the way it came, goes out from the nose to lie in wait for other victims. Though his report dealt only with monkeys and infantile paralysis. Dr. Flexner feels sure that other infectious and inflammatory diseases of the brain and spinal cord attack by this same shortcut.

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