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In 1908, Karl Landsteiner & Erwin Popper
discovered a filterable agent as the cause of poliomyelitis. An extract of
medula from a fatal human case was injected intraperitoneally in monkeys. He
worked then at the Pasteur Institute, because no monkeys were available in
the University of Vienna. The lesions that appeared were indistinguishable
from those found in humans.
They could not pass the disease monkey to monkey, but Simon Flexner & Paul
Lewis managed this and found antibodies. Arnold Netter & Constantin
Levaditti found antibodies in human convalescents in 1908. Levaditti &
Landsteiner demonstrated neutralizing antibodies in monkey serum against
active virus. Frank Mcfarland Burnet & Jean MacNamara en 1931 demonstrated
serotypes. |