A review of the literature reveals comparatively few extensive studies of the cerebrospinal fluid in acute poliomyelitis. This fact is due perhaps to the lack of opportunities for such studies, or to the failure to appreciate the value of the changes in such fluids.
Wickman1 in his exhaustive monograph on poliomyelitis pays only scant attention to the subject of the fluid in this disease. Römer and Joseph,2 too, slight the value of examination of fluids in their discussion of diagnosis. They have been particularly interested in the attempt to demonstrate specific substances in the fluid and serum by complement fixation. In this attempt they have failed, as also have Wollstein3 and Gay and Lucas.4
Plaüt,5 Rehm and Schottmüller devote a page to the cerebrospinal fluid of poliomyelitis in their book on cerebrospinal fluids. They say that cerebrospinal fluids in poliomyelitis contain no globulin and that