A Review of Recent Studies on the Epidemiology of Poliomyelitis in the United States *

As the title indicates, this is a review of recent American studies on the epidemiology of poliomyelitis. It will also include some of the old and better known opinions on this subject, and these will be considered in the light of new findings. Fortunately, perhaps, there will not be room to cover all current and pertinent American literature and so the review will be limited in its content to those epidemiological features which seem to be of the most clinical, or practical, significance; in other words, it will deal essentially with the Clinical Epidemiology of Poliomyelitis. This limitation is made advisedly because it is becoming evident from the many experimental studies of the past ten or fifteen years that we seem to have been learning more about the disease in the monkey than in man. Indeed, it is painfully evident that in spite of a vast amount of research on poliomyelitis, to which a voluminous literature' bears witness, we cannot control, prevent, or cure the acute disease any more effectively than could be done 30, 40, or 50 years ago in the pre-virus days of Medin and Wickman. But this does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of research workers in the United States, for investigative work on poliomyelitis is going forward more vigorously and more hopefully than ever before. Such ardor does not necessarily indicate progress, but it will be left to the reader to decide whether the trends which these researches are now taking are promising.