Medicine: Flies & Polio

One means by which infantile paralysis is spread far & wide has been discovered. The common house fly, according to topflight Poliomyelitis Researcher Albert Bruce Sabin and Robert Ward of the University of Cincinnati, is a carrier of the disease.

In their report on polio made last fortnight in Science, they told how they and Yale experts John Rodman Paul and James Bowling Trask spent the summer catching flies, a summer job that may eventually help to bring poliomyelitis under control.

Last July and August, during polio outbreaks in rural Connecticut and Alabama, and in Cleveland and Atlanta, the doctors trapped thousands of flies in those parts. They mashed up the flies in sterile water or ether, gave it to monkeys in feedings, injections or nosedrops. Down came the monkeys with polio.

To the scientists’ surprise, infected flies were found not only in insanitary places, but also in “a Government housing project consisting of modern, clean, thoroughly screened and hygienic homes.” The community had “a special brick enclosure for the garbage cans, all of which were covered.” In fact, Dr. Sabin noted, “there were so few flies about that it hardly seemed worthwhile to set out a trap.”

Dr. Sabin suggested that these findings may clear up the old mystery of why polio comes in the summer. And they further substantiate earlier theories that the disease comes from eating infected food.