It is the purpose of this paper to describe the methods used and to record the results obtained in a study made in July 1937 of 64 cases (in most of which the patients were nurses) of a strange recurring infection, well designated, according to the tissues chiefly affected, as encephalomeningoradiculitis and fibromyositis.
In most instances the illness began during an epidemic of poliomyelitis in 1934; in others it began during lesser outbreaks in 1935 and 1936. Acute anterior poliomyelitis was the original diagnosis in most of the cases. The original attack, although usually atypical,1 was probably referable to the virus of poliomyelitis as well as to the streptococcus.2 The virus was demonstrated in the nasopharynges of ill persons by Paul, Trask and Webster3 and in the spinal cord at autopsy by Kessel, Hoyt and Fisk4 as well as Rosenow, Heilman and Pettet.5 Streptococci were isolated consistently from the nasopharynx,