Equine Encephalomyelitis Produced by Inoculation of Human Encephalitis Virus

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Abstract
Report is made of the exptl. inoculation of horses and guinea pigs with the virus that caused the death of a child during the course of the epidemic of equine encephalomyelitis in Massachusetts. The symptoms in the inoculated animals, the comparatively brief incubation period, the acute course of the disease, the immunity against the injected virus in the eastern type encephalomyelitis-immune horse, and the equal susceptibility of the normal and the western type encephalomyelitis-immune horses are considered to furnish conclusive evidence that this virus, which was isolated from a human case reported by L. D. Fothergill et al., is indistinguishable from the eastern type of the equine encephalomyelitis virus. All 5 of the strains of equine encephalomyelitis virus that have been recovered by the U. S. D. A. Bureau of Animal Industry from Massachusetts horses during the 1938 epizootic have been determined to be of the eastern type through exposure of guinea pigs immunized against the eastern and others immunized against the western type of the equine virus.