Harvard Commission is Carrying on Fight to Check Infantile Paralysis--Work Headed by Dr. W. L. Aycock

The Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission, founded after the great epidemic of 1916 by the late Dr. R. W. Lovett '81 in conjunction with Professor M. J. Rosenau and Roger Pierce '04, has been active in the field during the present epidemic of the disease in New England, according to a statement from Mr. Pierce, when interviewed yesterday by a CRIMSON reporter.

"The present Commission, appointed by the President and Fellows of the University, is now undertaking detailed research work to determine the nature of the agencies which communicate infantile paralysis," said Mr. Pierce. "Raw milk is one of the few positively known means by which the disease is spread. To prevent this spreading, pasteurization should be employed. As for checking and curing the disease, Massachusetts and Vermont officials, cooperating with the Harvard Commission, believe they are on the road to success in abating infantile paralysis by the use of a serum made from the blood of human beings who have had the disease and have survived it.

"The research work of the Commission is carried on in the laboratories of the Harvard Medical School. Last summer, in addition to the laboratory studies, the Commission conducted an investigation in the field of the new cases reported to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in an effort to learn more of the cause and transmission of the disease, and gave skilled assistance to those afflicted. Dr. W. L. Aycock, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene at the Medical School, is head of the practicing end of the Commission, and is leading the fight against the present epidemic."

Dr. Aycock and his fellows have tried in vain to obtain a serum from the blood of artifically infected monkeys, for the monkey, although the only animal susceptible to the disease, is so sensitive that it cannot survive the attack of the paralysis germ. For this reason the Commission is requesting volunteers, survivors of the disease, to come forward with offers of their own blood. So far as results to date have been tabulated, the serum treatment seems a remedy for infantile paralysis if it is administered within the three days which ordinarily elapse between infection and actual paralysis.