http://www.aafp.org/afp/20001115/afp.html

This feature is part of a year-long series of excerpts and special commentaries celebrating AFP's 50th year of publication. Excerpts from the two 1950 volumes of GP, AFP's predecessor, appear along with highlights of 50 years of family medicine.

This feature includes short comments and remarks from the July through December 1950 issues of GP.

Antipolio Element in Human Milk

Recently Dr. Albert B. Sabin of the Children's Hospital Research Foundation of Cincinnati reported a most interesting discovery which may perhaps be the key to the solution of a terrible problem. What Doctor Sabin has found is a substance in the milk of about 75 percent of mothers and in the milk of an occasional cow, which will protect a baby from polio anywhere from one month to 340 days after birth.

This discovery can explain why in those parts of the world in which the mothers nurse their babies for three or four years, small children do not get paralyzed.

When the substance from the milk is mixed with the virus of polio and injected into the brains of mice, none of the animals get paralyzed. Everyone will watch with great interest for further reports on this substance in milk. (September 1950)

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