DISTURBANCE OF GASTRO-INTESTINAL INNERVATION IN POLIOMYELITIS

Abstract

Typhoid fever may sometimes cause paralysis of the muscles of the thigh, probably as a result of the spread of the typhoid toxins from the intestine along the sympathetic to the somatic nerves. 1 Natural protection is such that only patients who are extremely ill with the disease have muscular weakness, an extraordinary fact when one considers the amount of toxic material contained in the intestines of these patients. Since toxins from colon bacilli are considered to be much less potent for the human being than are those from Bacillus typhosus, one does not expect that the toxins from the colon bacilli will spread along the afferent or efferent sympathetic fibers and cause local paralysis by involvement of the somatic nerves. The validity of this assumption was proved by the fact that the injection of enteric toxins into the subserosa or into the lumen of the small intestine of Macacus