Dr. Rosenow's Obsession

For 27 years the medical profession has politely raised its eyebrows and looked down its nose at Bacteriologist Edward Carl Rosenow. But Dr. Rosenow, a stubborn man, has persisted in his peculiar obsession. Says he: there is a strep-polio axis--somehow, in ways no doctor understands, streptococcus plays a malignant part in infantile paralysis. (A coccus is a round bacterium large enough to be seen with an ordinary microscope. A virus is so small it can be seen only with an electron microscope, has some bacteria-like and some protein-like qualities--no one knows for sure whether it is living matter or a chemical.)

Year after year Dr. Rosenow has published painstaking research papers showing how he: 1) invariably finds a certain kind of streptococci in brains and spinal fluid of animal and human poliomyelitis victims; 2) finds the same germs in milk, water and the throats of about 33% of well people during polio epidemics; 3) finds very few of the germs between epidemics; 4) makes a streptococcus serum that protects animals from poliomyelitis.

Last fortnight 69-year-old Dr. Rosenow got in two good licks: he reviewed the whole subject in the Lancet and in the International Bulletin, which broke a precedent by devoting a whole issue to his article. He reiterated his big discovery (1942) that he can make streptococcus change into a virus, and vice versa. His photographs of slides show the streptococcus in graduated sizes, some so small that the next size is presumably invisible. He says his converted virus causes poliomyelitis (and sometimes encephalitis). If verified, these findings will be big news, since Dr. Rosenow's streptococcus lends itself to serum making much better than the polio virus does.

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