WESTERN EQUINE ENCEPHALOMYELITIS FOLLOWING ACCIDENTAL INOCULATION WITH CHICK EMBRYO VIRUS

Abstract

A number of cases of equine encephalomyelitis have been recorded as occurring in man. In none of these, however, has the incubation period been established.¹In 1939 Fothergill, Holden and Wyckoff²reported a case in which equine encephalomyelitis occurred in a woman aged 30 ten days after she was employed in a laboratory, where she worked with chick embryo virus. The route of her infection could not be ascertained although there were rumors of possible injury to a finger from a gold pointed needle breaking off in it. Careful investigation failed to establish the truth of this rumor. No report was made by the patient, although strict orders for reporting the slightest accident were constantly enforced and observed and no damaged needle was turned in. Since I could not find a single instance in the literature in which the incubation period in the human being was known, the