Medicine: Epidemic Aftermath

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The chilly weather which swept the country last week marked the end of the infantile paralysis season. For the next six or seven months parents may rest easy on that score. With the danger period behind them, doctors reviewed just what they had accomplished in 1935 with a disease which made epidemic headlines during the past summer (TIME, June 24, et seq.).

In Milwaukee, before the American Public Health Association, Professor John Albert Kolmer of Philadelphia declared: "Up to the present time between 10,000 and 12,000 children have been immunized with my vaccine [virus weakened with a castor oil derivative]. No case receiving the full three doses has developed poliomyelitis. However, eight patients who had only one or two doses did contract the disease, indicating what I have long believed, that one or two vaccinations are insufficient."

In Milwaukee also was Manhattan's Dr. Maurice Brodie, who stated that none of the 8,000 children given his vaccine [virus killed with formalin] last summer had contracted infantile paralysis. He also stated that 8,000 trials were too few to prove the value of his vaccine.

Two eminent specialists in epidemic diseases uprose to throw strong doubt upon both the Kolmer and the Brodie concoctions. Dr. Thomas Milton Rivers of the Rockefeller Institute and Dr. James Payton Leake of the U. S. Public Health Service were especially perturbed by Dr. Kolmers preparation. They suspected that the weakened virus was still strong enough to cause infantile paralysis, and that Dr. Kolmer's explanation was not valid. Decided Dr. Rivers: "Time and circumstances make it imperative that Dr. Kolmer show his vaccine is absolutely safe."

Turning to Dr. Brodie. Dr, Rivers said that Brodie vaccine apparently was harmless, that he doubted its efficacy, and under no circumstances would testify for it before 100.000 children had been inoculated and undeniably protected from infantile paralysis by it.