1 The Departments of Pediatrics and Bacteriology and the Hixon Memorial Laboratory, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, Kan.
In certain families poliomyelitis attacks many, if not all, members of the household. Not all members of the household develop paralytic poliomyelitis. The onset of illnesses among members occurs at the same time, suggesting a common exposure. The factors responsible for an intense common exposure of most, if not all, members in a household at risk are largely unknown.
In a search for poliomyelitic virus at extra-human sources in a rural epidemic, virus was detected in sewage and creek water. Poliomyelitis was not found in the entrails of birds, frogs or fish collected in the immediate areas of human cases of poliomyelitis.
Submitted on June 8, 1949