ACUTE ANTERIOR POLIOMYELITIS IN NEW YORK IN 1935

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present some new and important aspects of poliomyelitis as seen in the epidemic that was prevalent in the city of New York in 1935. This was the third largest outbreak in New York during the past twenty-five years. The largest number of cases, 9,023, was recorded in 1916; 4,138 cases were reported in 1931 and 2,054 in 1935. These observations were made at the Willard Parker Hospital, to which 686 of the 2,054 patients in the 1935 epidemic were admitted. Most of the patients came from Manhattan and the Bronx. The incidence of the disease was 27 per hundred thousand in these boroughs. Since Leake and his co-workers¹expressed the belief that 10 cases of the paralytic form per hundred thousand a year is the normal or average rate for a given community, the 1935 outbreak, therefore, was of moderate epidemic proportions.