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News, Comments and Serum Honor Roll

We use the word "polio," which is not correct from either the standpoint of the dictionary or medical literature, for the reason that it is the abbreviation used, sooner or later, by most victims of anterior poliomyelitis, which latter term presents almost insurmountable problems of pronunciation and spelling to laymen in general. We certainly feel that the terminology "infantile paralysis" should be abandoned for the reason that it is a misnomer leading to the impression that only children suffer from this disease. Are we right or wrong in furthering the usage of the term "polio"? We would be glad to hear from our readers on this score.

Unfortunately, 1931 has brought polio in epidemic form in certain sections of the country and several thousand new cases have been added to the army, numbering possibly 300,000 in the United States, who have suffered from this disease.

There is, however, much reason for optimism in analyzing the situation this year. It is the belief of the staff and trustees of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation that never before have epidemics of polio been handled with so much intelligent preparedness and skill. It is idle to guess how many more cases would have suffered actual and residual paralysis except for this foresight, but it seems a conservative statement to say that the number would have been much, much larger. And best of all, practical knowledge of the diseases on the part of large numbers of medical practitioners and laymen has been materially increased; serum has been prepared in quantities never before attempted and made more generally available.

We want especially to congratulate New York State and New York City on the exceptional handling of this year's epidemic under the able leadership of Dr. Thomas Parran, Jr., Health Commissioner for the State of New York, and Dr. Shirley Wynne, Health Commissioner for the City of New York.

We submit with pride the following honor roll of those Warm Springs undergraduates and alumni who gave blood for serum since the August issue went to press:

August 14-15 at Warm Springs.

Louis M. Weinberg, of New York City.
William Aukerman, of Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Perry Mann; of Warm Springs, Ga.
Edward Moriarty, of Kansas City.
Lawrence Dorety, of St. Paul, Minn.
Fred Cady, of Syracuse, N. Y.
Robert Jennings, of Boonton, N. J.
Robert VanHorn, of Peekskill, N. Y.
Elena Lincoln, of Redwood City, Cal.
Nancy Gunn, of River Forest, Ill.
Janet Gunn, of River Forest, Ill.
Frances Bair, of Cuba City, Wis.
Dorothy Sweeney, of Fall River Mass.
Lillian Donovan, of Harvard, Ill.
Cora Duste, of Warm Springs, Ga.
Richard McFeely, of Philadelphia.
Floyd Hicks, of Indianapolis.
Arthur Silverman, Perth Amboy, N. J.
Jack Norris, of Warm Springs, Ga.
Harold Boles, of Madison, Kansas.
Mary Devlin, of Philadelphia.
Paul D. Fern, of Norwood, Ohio.
Pauline Murrell, of Washington, D. C.
Oscar Bell, of Americus, Ga.
Dorothy Lynn, of Seattle, Washington.
Sadie Sparkman, of Jacksonville, Fla.
Harold Denton, of Jewell, Kansas.
Bernard Katz, of Perth Amboy, N. J.
Elmer Gillespie, of Philadelphia.
Ralph Keating, of Los Altos, California.
William Cook, of Seattle, Washington.

Alumni who gave blood at places other than Warm Springs:

Dorothy Thum, at Montclair, N. J.
Mrs. E. Norman Bull, at Albany, N. Y.
Bolte Gibson, at Philadelphia.
Paul Hasbrook, at Poughkeepsie.

Undoubtedly, this is a very incomplete list of our alumni who have aided the crusade against polio. Certainly we know from the newspapers that hundreds of other polio convalescents have aided the cause.

Our latest information on the availability of human convalescent polio serum is as follows: State and Canadian Provincial Departments of Health:

Connecticut
Virginia
Georgia
Wisconsin
District of Columbia
Nova Scotia
Maine
Alberta
New York
Quebec
Tennessee
Manitoba

Cities, laboratories or hospitals where serum is available:

Boston, Mass. -- Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission.
Chicago Ill. -- The Deutch Serum Center Michael Reese Hospital.
Des Moines, Iowa -- Anna T. Glomset Laboratory.
Detroit, Mich. -- City Department of Health Laboratory.
Great Falls, Mass. -- Great Falls Clinic.
Hartford, Conn. --City Health Department.
Indianapolis, Ind. -- Riley Hospital.
Kansas City, Mo. -- Laboratory of Bell Memorial Hospital and Dr. Rex R. Dively.
Los Angeles, Cal. -- Orthopedic Hospital School.
New York City -- State Department of Health, Westchester County Department of Health, and Rockefeller Institute.
Philadelphia, Pa. -- City Department of Health.
Portland, Oregon -- Doernbacher Children's Hospital.
San Francisco, Cal. -- Hooper Foundation for Medical Research.
Tacoma, Washington -- The Porro Biological Laboratories.

It is to be hoped that 1932 will see serum available in each of the forty-eight states. Much interest is being expressed in the new technique of preparing serum in a dried form as described in the Journal of the American Medical Association for June 20, 1931.