From the spring of 1920 until recently, there have been comparatively few new cases of epidemic (lethargic) encephalitis in North America, and interest in it has been kept up mainly by the surprising array of its somatic and psychic sequels. Within the last few weeks, however, reports have come of a large epidemic in Winnipeg, and smaller ones in Connecticut and elsewhere. Since 1917, nearly 2,000 articles on this disease have appeared, and, within the last two years, four comprehensive reviews in book form.1 In addition, the French investigator Levaditi has written a book giving a comparative epidemiologic, pathologic and clinical study of the three closely related acute infectious disorders of the nervous system: encephalitis, poliomyelitis and herpes.2
The etiology of both acute encephalitis and poliomyelitis remains unsettled. The champions of the "globoid bodies" of Loewe, Hirschfield and Strauss, and those of the streptococcus, have not yet agreed