MR. LOYSTER’S ARGUMENT AND PROOF THAT INFANTILE PARALYSIS IS CAUSED BY VACCINATION
The theory of the possibility of conveying infantile paralysis through vaccine abrasions as well as the probability of the vaccine having contained the germs receives startling confirmation in three cases in the home of S. V. Minnick of Carthage, reported under numbers 27, 28, and 29. Ruth, 10½, and Hobart, 13, were vaccinated the same day from the same tube of virus. Both became very sick in just ten days from vaccination. The boy, being older, recovered, after a severe illness, with symptoms much like the girl. Ruth died after a plain case of infantile paralysis, which was so reported by her attending physician. Four days before the little girl’s death, in compliance with the demand of the school authorities, the little brother, Charles, age 6, was vaccinated. In precisely 10 days he, also, became very sick, with symptoms practically identical with the other two children. He was unconscious and helpless for two weeks, but recovered with a slight residual paralysis. He was attended by another physician and the only diagnosis reported is “vaccination.”
Simultaneous cases of infantile paralysis in the same family have hitherto been so rare as to excite comment. Many physicians with large practice have never had an instance in their entire practice. Here are three in one house.
The theory of “subsequent infection” needs extensive “bracing” in this instance; and then there is Case 19 with onset in 12 days; Case 24, onset in 11 days; Case 25, onset in 11 days; unquestionably paralysis cases, with practically identical incubation periods, all contributing evidence of a common and simultaneous infection. What other possible common origin except the vaccine virus is it possible to place under suspicion? It is unthinkable that these children, widely scattered in different portions of the State, with no history of near-by paralysis cases, could have each accidentally acquired the germ in the vaccination wound exactly ten or eleven days from vaccination. Such a theory presupposes a universal distribution of the poliomyelitis germ entirely at variance with observation and experience.
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Note. Vaccination is acknowledged to be one of the causes of Infantile Paralysis by a recent medical authority on this subject, Dr. Oskar Vulpius, in a book published by Wm. Wood & Company of New York, 1912.—C. M. H.