Polio and Encephalitis

Over much of the U.S., polio was rampant last week. The Public Health Service reported 2,648 fresh cases in a single week, boosting the total for the "disease year" (which begins in late March) to 12,046. This was 71% more than in the same period last year, and alarmingly close to the 12,865 in 1949, which turned out to be the nation's peak epidemic year for polio.

But it was still too early to say whether 1952 was going to be like 1949. Each summer, the onslaught of poliomyelitis reaches its peak in late August or September. Until they could plot that peak on their charts, Public Health statisticians were making no forecasts.

Worst-hit areas to date: Texas (2,279 cases, numbers already dropping), Ohio and Iowa (numbers leveling off), Nebraska (numbers still rising). Notably free from severe epidemics: New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

To physicians, the fruit-growing San Joaquin Valley (part of California's great Central Valley) is less noted for its aliments than for its ailments. It was there that doctors found a strange disease of the lungs caused by fungus spores (coccidioidomycosis, or more simply, valley fever). There, too, they see each year a creeping plague, of Western equine encephalitis, commonly called sleeping sickness, an inflammation of the brain caused by a virus to which men and horses are especially vulnerable.

The valley has been hard hit this year, and though public health officials are shying away from the panic word epidemic they admit that the outbreak may prove to be California's worst. Day after day patients have been admitted to hospitals with splitting headaches, stiff necks and high fever, later to lapse into a coma which may last for weeks. Children and the elderly are especially affected; the virus does not so often strike adults in their prime. Unlike the Eastern and St. Louis virus, the Western form rarely causes permanent brain damage.

By last week 425 cases had been reported, but only 76 sure cases of encephalitis had been proved, with 121 others still suspected. Three deaths had been definitely traced (by autopsy) to encephalitis, and doctors thought it was the cause of 20 others.

Meanwhile, because the virus is carried by a mosquito (Culex tarsails) which breeds in stagnant water, valley residents were going all out to put oil on pools and spray everything in sight.

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