Word: polio
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Scientists who have been experimenting with poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) virus have been considerably hampered because the only animal they could infect was the expensive rhesus monkey. Last year Dr. Charles Armstrong of the U. S. Public Health Service finally succeeded in giving polio to ordinary cotton rats. That hurdle passed, he was able to pass the infection from cotton rats to mice...
Last fortnight, in the Rockefeller Journal of Experimental Medicine, Drs. Claus W. Jungeblut and Murray Sanders of Columbia University announced the next step: successful immunization of monkeys against polio. First they took a strain of live polio virus deadly to monkeys and injected it into a cotton rat. He frisked around apparently in perfect health. Then they passed a portion of his polio-saturated brain on to Rat No. II. He became mildly sick. A suspension of his brain, in turn, was given to Rat No. III. He became paralyzed, and his brain, when given to mice, killed them...
Under the scarehead Has 'Polio' Hit the Yankees?, Editor Powers demanded: "Has the mysterious 'polio' germ which felled Lou Gehrig also struck his former teammates, turning a once great team into a floundering non-contender? According to overwhelming opinion of the medical profession, poliomyelitis, similar to infantile paralysis, is communicable. The Yanks were exposed to it at its most acute stage. They played ball with the afflicted Gehrig, dressed and undressed in the locker room with him, traveled, played cards and ate with him. Isn't it possible some of them also became infected...
...weight to his fantastic diagnosis, "Doctor" Powers quoted medical textbooks, cited cases of other athletes who had been "struck down in the dark by the dread 'polio' germ." He dressed up his four-column story with a full-bosomed photograph of Diver Georgia Coleman (stricken with infantile paralysis three years ago), pathetic pictures of onetime Iron Man Gehrig "before and after," and a lurid drawing of "the Yanks" smitten by a terrifying plague...
Actually, Gehrig never was "felled" by the polio germ. His ailment, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (TIME, March 25), is something quite different, is not communicable. The New York Yankees hurriedly disproved "Doctor" Powers' quack diagnosis by winning six games in a row and moving up to third place in the American League pennant race-only six games behind the league-leading Cleveland Indians. Lou Gehrig's rebuttal was more direct. Saying that he is now "a pariah whom many people shun," honest, earnest Lou Gehrig, who has been practically canonized since retiring from baseball last summer, last week brought...