A Dread Children’s Disease
THE most alarming danger to the children of this country to-day is the rapid spread of the disease known as infantile paralysis. According to an article in Hampton’s Magazine for December there are from 20,000 to 25,000 cases of the disease in the United States at present, and authorities place the minimum number of cases since 1905 at 100,000. The article is written by Dr. Jacolyn Manning, who was secretary of the West Wisconsin District Medical Society, and in charge of the work of stamping out the epidemic there. During the past year Dr. Manning has made a specialty of the study of infantile paralysis, and her field has been national in scope. The following extract from her article shows the fearful ravages of the disease: “This disease, infantile spinal paralysis, has prevailed in epidemic form in the United States during the past four summers. In 1907 it swept the North Atlantic seaboard. In 1908 Wisconsin was visited by an epidemic of five hundred cases reported by me. The Massachusetts epidemic of nine hundred and twenty-three cases in 1909 was reported by Dr. Robert Lovett, of Boston. Pennsylvania has reported eight hundred cases for the summer of 1910. Rhode Island, Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, and Idaho—all have paid fearful toll, while other states have not been exempt. “Statistics are difficult to get, as the disease has been placed but lately on the reportable list by the boards of health of the most seriously menaced states. A conservative estimate from authoritative sources places the minimum number of cases since 1905 at 100,000. There are from 20,000 to 25,000 cases in the United States at present. Of every hundred cases fifteen resulted in death, ten completely recovered, and sixty or more were left with permanent paralysis of one or more limbs. This means that six or seven children in every ten attacked by the disease, are doomed to go through the years without the complete use of their bodies, a small percentage with both legs useless, some with a leg or an arm withered, some with feet clubbed and misshapen—but all handicapped in some degree for the race of life.”