1916: "Infantile Paralysis" - Poliomyelitis

The Medical World Symposium on Anterior Poliomyelitis - let the "scientific" dart throwing begin.

Sep 25, 2024

Today’s Article from the Archives is titled “infantile Paralysis” from The Homoeopathic Recorder, dated October 15, 1916. The reason to sharing is to provide some insight into the state of “medical science” just two years before the peak of the 1918 pandemic in the US, an event which we are told today that somewhere between 20-100 million died from “influenza”!

Read the whole article for yourself from page 435 - HERE

For your convenience (and because the substack App has AI that can read for you, if you are a slow reader like myself I have transcribed the article below. I found it interesting, I hope you do also.

Again, this is was written in 1916.

(Highlights are mine)

Infantile Paralysis

The estimable and widely circulated contemporary, The Medical World, has worked up a "Symposium on Anterior Poliomyelitis," or "infantile paralysis," and possibly several other names. Believing that it may interest homoeopaths to know what treatment the Scientific Physicians are employing in, this ''new," but really very old, disease we give herewith a brief abstract of it from the World's symposium. As this is to be a purely scientific abstract no names will be quoted.

I sure do love these homeopaths!

I went on the hunt in the newspaper archives for some extra insight leading up to October 1916: The New York Times first mentioned “polio” in 1857, then not much until August 1899 when an uncommon and “baffling” disease that was “spreading with remarkable rapidity” in New York and surroundings and was "believed… to be Contagious”, reappeared. It then disappeared again until 1907, and by 1910 was in the paper often.

In July 1916 there was an “epidemic that infected hundreds of New Yorkers and killed about a fifth of them”.12 (I wonder what pesticides were being used around this time, especially inside homes?). Here is a report in JAMA Back to the article…

The first to be noticed is ''ideal quarantine," which is impossible "because mandates come into antagonistic contact with commercial interests, human ignorance, superstition and cupidity." "The police power should be employed." Otherwise, the patient should be disinfected — nasal, faucial, buccal and alimentary. 'The same treatment should be applied to the urine."
As for drugs, camphor oil, aceto-salicylic acid [Aspirin], with extract of aconite root. In suspicious cases lumbar puncture and human serum should be called in. Or adrenalin solution "directly into the cerebro-spinal canal." Also, possibly, "stimulation and hydrotherapy."
No. 2. Advises the use of Calcium sulphid, together with other incidental remedies, such as Aconitin, saline laxatives, internal antiseptics and acetic acid.
No. 3. Advises the use of Spanish fly blisters, spice plaster, also saline purgative and antifebrile treatment when indicated.
No. 4. Advocates counter-irritation. He also gives the ingredients of spice plaster, namely, ounce each of ginger, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, and one dram of cayenne pepper, mixed with honey.
No. 5. Monkey serum. In drug : "The only drug which has shown, to our knowledge, any useful degree of activity is hexamethylenamin." (This seems a little severe on his brothers.)
No. 6. Believes in lumbar puncture, and, as indicated, hexamethylenamin, aspirin, salol, pyramidon, opium, bromides, chloral, iodid of potassium and strychnia.
No. 7. Recommends for the various phases of the disease, bromides, codein, morphin, aspirin, the serum of those who have had the disease and adrenalin.

Wow, the men of “science” sure do seem to be shooting darts to deal with this new (but old) disease they’ve labelled Poliomyelitis. And what the heck do they mean by Monkey serum?

From the foregoing mixup one can but conclude that our allopathic brethren do not know the meaning of the word ''science," which they use so freely. ''Hobbies" would be the truer term for them.
If any one thinks this is too severe let him glance over the foregoing symposium. Let him look over the drugs named and then ask himself, is this stuff worthy of the name of "science?"
When one contrasts this with homoeopathic treatment and at the same time compares the results of the two treatments, one wonders why the whole medical world does not come over to Homoeopathy.

From the 2024 perspective, I actually do wonder where we would be today if the American Medical Association, a political lobby group backed by the funding of the Rockefeller/Carnegie organisations, hadn’t systematically legislated and licenced the homeopaths nearly to extinction. Imagine if both modalities were allowed to freely develop?

If you are not aware of the homeopath statistics check out some of my past stacks.

Another article in this same journal on the topic of Poliomyelitis provides another snapshot of our history. Lets go back to August 15, 2016 from page 339.

*Poliomyelitis, Otherwise Infantile Paralysis* - read in full from page 339 - HERE

(Bold mine, and links added)

The New York Academy of Medicine recently held a "Symposium on Infantile Paralysis" that was quite fully reported in the Journal of the A. M. A.. Very naturally Simon Flexner, of the Rockefeller Institute led off with a paper on "The Nature, Manner of Conveyance and Means of Prevention of Infantile Paralysis," none of which he really explained or claimed to explain.

Dr Simon Flexner is Abraham Flexner’s brother. Abraham worked at the time for the Carnegie Foundation when in 1910 released his publication commonly referred to as the Flexner Report. Simon Flexner was chosen as the first dean of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and was a prolific early vaccine research scientists!

He said the disease is "infectious and communicable," "caused by the invasion of the cerebral nervous organs — of a minute, filterable micro-organism which has now been secured in artificial cultures and as such is distinctly visible under the higher power of the microscope." Whence it cometh and whither it goeth, or what is gained by this alleged ultra high-powered microscopic discovery, or how nearer it brings us to a cure of the disease, is not stated, probably because his was a scientific paper.
Looking over the article for positive statements we find that "epidemics of infantile paralysis always arise during the period of warm summer weather." Also that while "our present knowledge excludes insects from being active agents in the dissemination of infantile paralysis, they nevertheless fall under suspicion" as being possible "mechanical carriers." Incidentally all domestic animals and fowls labor under the same suspicion.

What is being sprayed, and where is it being sprayed during that warm weather to kill pests?

In fact it seems that the weather, flies, mosquitoes, lice, bedbugs, chickens, geese, turkeys, ducks, cats, dogs, horses, cows, pigs, sheep, mules, men, women, children, and everything else is suspected. One very sane remark is, that all are not equally susceptible to the disease; to this we may add, it is quite probable that all do not have the conditions in them, hence the "germ" is harmless, and so the world escapes extermination. "There exists at present no safe method of preventive inoculation or vaccination, and no practical method of specific treatments.

One hunderd years later, in 2020, basically the same mantra was echoed for “COVID-19”.

Dr. Henry Koplik, who has seen many cases said of the disease: 'The patient has an attack of vomiting and slight fever, and within twenty-four the mother observes that the child cannot move one or the other extremity." This is the purely spinal cases, which are the most numerous. In the graver form the paralysis appears gradually and involves not only the lower extremities but other parts of the body, with delirium and many other distressing symptoms.
(Just here note that a man familiar with the disease says that Belladonna is the best preliminary prescription in all cases. — Ed. H. R.)
Dr. George Draper divides the disease into five classes which may be summarized as gastro-intestinal, respiratory, febrile, meningismus, and *'the type in which paralysis occurs.''
(Again. This variety can only be met scientifically by the law of Similia. — Ed H. R.)
Dr. Louis C. Ager, Kingston Ave. Hospital, where 320 cases had been received divided them into three classes, namely, encephalitic, poliomyelitic and meningitic. "Perhaps this classification is not scientific, but we have found it valuable for bedside work. We found as usual that the lower extremities were most frequently paralyzed. In a group of sixty-four cases examined, the lower extremities were involved in thirty-nine instances : in seven instances the upper extremities ; in five there was facial paralysis ; in thirteen cases the only definite symptoms were marked paralysis of the muscles of the back. There were two typical ataxic cases."
Dr. Haven Emerson said that during the first six months of 1916 there were, in New York, 884 deaths from diarrhoeal diseases and 57 from the infantile paralysis. "One of the chief points of interest in connection with the epidemic is the psychologic state of the lay public." Also : "We must acknowledge that our present method of dealing with the disease is an experiment." Also: "In a group of 700 cases accurately studied the mortality was found to be 27 per cent. The average mortality is estimated in foreign epidemics has been from 7 to 10 per cent."
(Dr. Emerson's figures, 57 deaths from the paralysis, do not seem to fit in with the facts, but at any rate, the fact seems to be that diarrhoea is more prevalent and dangerous, yet they do not quarantine or employ scare methods because of it. Perhaps the public's psychologic state is due to the methods employed by the health officials in ''fighting" the baby paralysis. — Ed. H. R.)
Dr. W. H. Park said: 'The sick person and the carrier are the chief sources of infection," which notion may account for the psychological state of the public. How the infection occurs in the hundreds of isolated cases no one attempted to explain. In the discussion Dr. Emerson, in reply to a question, said: "We regard it as perfectly safe to admit patients with poliomyelitis into general hospitals," an assertion that crosses the bows of Dr. Park's. But, on the other hand, Dr. Louria said : "An epidemic can be stopped only by an early recognition of those cases that do not show any paralysis." If every child that shows vomiting, plus a little fever, is to be a suspect, we might as well quarantine every house in which there are children.

As I read this I see so many parallels to 2020.

Hasn't this germ, carrier, quarantine craze among the medical Brahmins gone far enough? The inference from the remarks of Dr. Emerson, quoted above, is that this is the first time that fear-producing quarantine has been extensively employed, yet the result is 27 against 7 to 10 per cent, where it was not employed.
The whole reminds one of the ancient story, doubtless familiar to the greater number of readers. Here it is, as remembered :
An Arab chief met Cholera going to Allepo. "Whither?" asked the chief. "To slay 10,000." Months afterwards the chief met Cholera returning. "Thou lied to me, thau slew 20,000." "Nay, I slew but 10,000; Fear killed the others."

Another quick article from page 367 of the same publication is the New York State Department of Health’s description of Poliomyelitis commonly called Infantile Paralysis.

"Poliomyelitis is a disease of the spinal cord or its extension into the brain. It is manifested by fever, sometimes convulsions, digestive disturbances, vomiting and diarrhea, and followed by a weakness or paralysis of one or more groups of muscles, usually of the arms and legs. There are sometimes symptoms resembling acute meningitis, including rigidity of the neck. There may be difficulty in swallowing. Pain and soreness along the spine and the affected muscles are frequently present. The onset may be very sudden or gradual. Infants and young children are most often affected ; older children and adults less frequently so."
Is not Belladonna the true prophylactic for this disease?
Would not- Zincum be indicated in many cases?

I’ll leave it to the homeopaths to answer the latter questions.

According to the World Health Organisation in 20233 more than a 100 years on, “There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented.” They forgot to add, unless the preventative causes the disease i.e. vaccine-induced polio4 , you have to go looking for that information!

Until next time.

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