Polio of 1937

Omaha last week postponed the opening of school one week on account of an epidemic of infantile paralysis, and planned further weekly postponements until frost ends the season of danger. Meanwhile Omaha children may not go to Sunday school, theatres, parks or swimming pools. Omaha has not a single mechanical respirator similar to that in which Frederick Snite was transported from Peiping to Chicago (TIME, June 14), and every Omaha child whose chest was paralyzed this summer has died in spite of efforts by Omaha's fire department's inhalator squad.

Other regions that have had lesser "polio" epidemics this year: Michigan, home of Dr. Max Peet of the University of Michigan, who has advocated as a polio-preventive spraying the noses of children with a solution of zinc sulphate (TIME, July 5); Buffalo, which has posted guards along the 35-mile Niagara frontier on the chance that the epidemic was imported from, Ontario; Toronto and Kingston, Canada, which have postponed opening of school and advised parents to keep their children away from the Canadian National Exhibition to open at Toronto next week.

In general, however, this promises to be a light year for infantile paralysis. How much this may be due to the preventive effect of the Peet-Schultz nasal spray is any epidemiologist's guess. The solution for spraying, which was developed by Dr. Edwin William Schultz and Chemist Louis Philipp Gebhardt of Stanford University, consists of 1% zinc sulphate, 0.5% pure common salt, 1 % pontocaine hydrochloride (a local anesthetic) in distilled water. But to use this effectively is no easy trick. The careful spraying procedure advised by Dr. Peet:

"The subject is seated and an attendant holds the head tilted backward about 45DEG. This is the usual position for a nasal examination. A speculum is introduced into the nostril and under direct vision the spray tip is inserted upward along the septum until definitely past the middle turbinate. If it impinges on the roof of the nose it is slightly withdrawn. The bulb is squeezed the number of times required to introduce i cc. of solution. This amount completely covers the olfactory area. A similar procedure is then carried out on the opposite side of the nose."

Prophylactic teams, each composed of a specially trained doctor, a nurse and a clerk, this summer started to experiment on a national scale with the Peet-Schultz prophylactic under the general direction of Dr. Charles Armstrong of the U. S. Public Health service who last year found that the spraying of Alabama children's noses with alum did some good in preventing infantile paralysis. Half-a-dozen teams operated in Omaha last week. These teams soon found that metal tipped atomizers are apt to Injure the nostrils of young children, who jerk and sneeze when treated. Children of ten to twelve don't squirm so much. In general, however, the method is still too bothersome and unproved for most doctors and parents to attempt, unless Dr. Peet, as he is trying to do, invents a flexible-tipped atomizer. Recent expert opinions on the question:

Health Commissioner John Levi Rice of New York City (who as health officer of New Haven, Conn., made it the healthiest city of its size in the U. S.) : "In the face of an epidemic ... I don't think it would be wise to carry out widespread application of a technique for which so few experts are available. The experiments have shown that without such experts the use of chemical blockade immunization is valueless. As a practical public health measure this technique is still not even a hope, despite the fine results obtained."

Dr. Thomas Milton Rivers of the Rockefeller Institute--whose Director-Emeritus Simon Flexner has been the country's leader in trying to find out what causes infantile paralysis, whose colleague Dr. Peter Kosciusko Olitsky laid the scientific groundwork for the Peet-Schultz spray: '"If I had a child in an area where poliomyelitis appeared, I would take my child to a good otolaryngologist and ask him to apply the spray in the manner set forth by Dr. Peet."

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