Abstract
THE ETIOLOGY of the parainfectious and postvaccinal encephalomyelitides still represents an unsettled problem. The theory that the virus of the primary infectious disease itself causes the demyelinating encephalomyelitis has been fairly generally abandoned during the last decade. The same statement can be made concerning the activation theory, which claims that an agent different from the virus of the basic disease, and living in the organism in a latent state, is activated. However, the possible etiologic role of a living agent has recently been supported by Margulis, Soloviev and Shubladze,1who recovered a neurotropic virus from the blood in one case and of encephalomyelitis from the brain tissue in another. Most investigators nowadays favor the allergy theory, advanced in 1927 by Glanzmann for the explanation of vaccinal encephalitis and developed by Pette2on the basis of clinical and histopathological investigation of the human diseases for the whole field of

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